


A Diamond Sky Above Titanic

by Darjeweling



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel/Demon Relationship, Crossover, M/M, Mind Rape, RMS Titanic, Romance, Tragedy, Wing Kink, repost from FanFicton, well what do you expect it's based off Titanic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:42:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 58,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2077209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darjeweling/pseuds/Darjeweling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1912, and one angel and one demon's lives are about to change forever as they embark on the fateful maiden voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic - and a relationship utterly forbidden by both Heaven and Hell.</p><p>Rating and warnings for Chapter 13, the rest being far more mild. Some slight amendments to the 2011 FanFiction version, nothing major.</p><p>Once again, I apologise to the fandom for reading a comedy and writing a tragedy.</p><p>(Written 2011)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - A Century Lost

Crowley had been ordered to sink the Titanic. It had come from Beëlzebub himself, of the height of importance. The ship it was said God himself could not sink, the symbol of mankind’s innovation, and technological prowess, and scientific genius, was to be sunk by the Devil instead. Hope, optimism, ambition: they were all to slowly rust away on the bottom of the abyssal plain. He had got a commendation for his good work, when they’d made it to land.

Only thing was, Crowley had absolutely no memory of his time between Southampton and New York. Ten days of his life – an empty space. This, however, did not bother him. He couldn’t remember anything to do with Titanic for long enough to feel bothered. He knew that he had done his job, and that was just fine by him. It wasn’t a big deal. 

Aziraphale knew differently. Aziraphale’s superiors had not been so hard on him: he could remember. For a hundred years, he had remembered. Crowley would, in all likelihood, never know. His memories of the incident had been suppressed.

It was presently four o’clock in the morning, on the fifteenth of April, 2012, and what Aziraphale was currently doing was sitting on the stone footpath that bordered the docks of Southampton. His legs were hanging above the water, and he was sitting on his jacket with his hands behind him, leaning against his arms. He was waiting for Crowley.

In the distance, Southampton’s port was starting to come to life. A touch of deep violet, so faint no human would have caught it yet, was tingeing the eastern horizon as the sun finally prepared to chase away the night. Behind him, somewhere on a nearby road, a lone car swished past.

Aziraphale crossed his ankles the other way, sighed out a breath, and waited. He would wait all night.

 


	2. Southampton

**_April 10_ ** **_ th_ ** **_, 1912_ **

Aziraphale looked out of his carriage window and couldn’t believe it. He faced forward again, stared wide-eyed at the black interior upholstery opposite. Then he looked out once more.

She was _massive_. Unbelievable. He’d never seen anything quite like her in all his almost-six thousand years on Earth. She was almost too big for the dock. The tug boats at her base looked like tiny fish, the kind that surround whales to clean them of parasites. She stretched up to the sky as great as a basking Leviathan, the people flocking at her base, or scrambling across her decks, dwarfed to ants in her shadow. She was awe-inspiring, humbling, regal. The R.M.S. Titanic was everything the papers had promised her to be.

Aziraphale was so _excited_. He felt giddy with it. One couldn’t help but be excited. History was being made today: the day the world’s largest metaphor for mankind’s innovation, technological prowess and scientific genius set off on her maiden voyage. And _he_ , Aziraphale, was going with her.

A porter opened his carriage door for him. Aziraphale all but leapt out.

And sucked in a breath of wonder.

It couldn’t be expressed in words. Nothing could have prepared him for this, he thought, marvelling. He’d seen illustrations of her on posters and in newspapers for weeks, or the occasional black-and-white photograph; he had thought he knew what to expect. But _this_. She was completely different in real life; it just had to be experienced with your own eyes. Aziraphale found himself standing there, staring, unable to take his eyes off the ship. That Thomas Andrews, he thought reverently. What a brilliant man. Perhaps he’d mention something to Heaven about commissioning him to build the next Ark, if need arose.

He wasn’t left alone long enough to stare for much longer: even as a first-class passenger he was soon being jostled and banged into by people of all creeds and classes, and from all sides. The docks were absolutely thronged with people: women holding children in their arms and waving at the passengers already aboard; third-class families heaving tired old bags of belongings behind them; preposterously elegantly dressed first-class men and women sashaying through the throngs as White Star Line officials cleared the way for them; dirty street urchins pushing their scruffy little bodies through; fathers bouncing their wonder-struck children on their shoulders as they called and pointed. So many people, from so many different backgrounds, all of them chattering excitedly and animatedly over the top of each other. The air was buoyant with hope and optimism. It seemed to sing with it.

“Sir?” this was the well-trained voice of one of the stewards, at his side. “Will you be requiring assistance in carrying your luggage on board?”

Aziraphale turned and beamed at him. So helpful, these fine young men. “Why yes, thank you. That would be most kind.”

 _What_ a trip this was going to be, Aziraphale thought happily, as his assortment of worn olive-and-black tartan suitcases were unloaded from the luggage rack. He felt so proud of humanity.

One of those fancy new motor cars was coming up behind them, audible even over the din with that whining engine. This one, when it came into view, was an ostentatious burgundy thing with gold bordering and those large peculiar “head-lamp” things at its front. The chauffeur behind the wheel, he could see, was struggling to get through the crowds, who had flocked on the pavement and cobbled road alike. As the angel watched, one of the several passengers in the back seats leaned forward to say something to the driver, who then, evidently taking the speaker’s advice, began to sound the horn and advance more aggressively forwards whether the people got out of his way in time or not. Everyone did, but the attitude angered Aziraphale all the same.

The car stopped, and now the crowd was being forced back by smartly uniformed White Star Line officials. Someone important then, thought Aziraphale, sniffing disdainfully. His curiosity was piqued though, and he craned his neck to get a better look.

The first man to emerge from the back seats after the door had been opened for him explained all the fuss. He was a thickly moustachioed fellow, perhaps fifty years of age, impeccably dressed in a pale grey pinstripe suit, and with an air of, Aziraphale thought, smug superiority.

J. Bruce Ismay, Aziraphale realised. The Managing Director of White Star Line, and therefore Titanic’s legal owner. From what the angel had read of him in the papers, the man was not one Heaven were expecting when his time was up. 

He watched as Ismay turned and extended a hand to help his wife out, elegantly dressed in that ridiculous getup of the affluent first-class woman. They were then followed by one other gentleman, and when Aziraphale caught sight of his face the angel spluttered in astonishment.

The man was pale and young – or at least appeared that way – somewhere in his mid-twenties. He had a striking, angular face, with high cheekbones and sharp features, and silky black hair that gleamed beneath his top hat. He wore tinted glasses with stylishly circular lenses, too dark to reveal the eyes beneath. He had snakeskin gloves, and snakeskin shoes, and was dressed at the height of fashion in a black three-piece suit with a little – probably snakeskin – handkerchief in his breast pocket. His name was Anthony J. Crowley, and he was, in official terms, Aziraphale’s oldest and greatest Adversary. In their own, he was his oldest and greatest friend.

As he watched, Crowley leaned in to Ismay and murmured something to the older man, who gave him a brief knowing smile before turning back to the photographers. Aziraphale was agog. Crowley? With the Managing Director of White Star Line?

Oh, it was so _typical_. That old serpent! Muscling right in on one of Britain’s most powerful businessmen, influencing his decisions, convoluting his morals, getting invited to all the fancy parties, and most likely condemning the poor man to an Eternity in Hell in the process.

Aziraphale wished he could seethe at the demon. That would be the angelic thing to do. But he couldn’t help himself. It was just so good to see his old friend again. It hadn’t even been a century, but the decades seemed so much longer these days with the rate technology was advancing. They had so much to catch up on, so many things to discuss.

He managed to push his way (gently and politely, of course) to the front of the gang of reporters that had assembled around the trio and their entourage. Perhaps he could somehow subtly catch the demon’s attention...

~

 

Anthony J. Crowley was very fond of the Titanic.  

As far as transport innovations went, to him, she took the hat. Sure, it had mostly all been done before, on a smaller scale, but it was the scale that made it so flipping fantastic. Eight hundred and eighty-three feet long, nearly fifty thousand tonnes, with absolutely unparalleled luxury. She had a bloody _sauna_ , for crying out loud. It was like travelling on a floating, super fast, six-star hotel. And _he_ , Crowley, was going with her on her maiden voyage.

Good old Mr Ismay had assured him he would enjoy one of Titanic’s finest suites, on the Bridge deck right in the centre, for all his contributions to the ship’s finishing touches. Crowley was very proud of his input, and imagined he had really saved White Star Line a fair bob or two: he felt he always gave the most economical and helpful suggestions. Like having a smaller rudder. And reducing the number of comfortable commodities in third-class.

It was, all in all, a triumph.

Tagging around one human for years wasn’t really Crowley’s style, but exceptions had to be made for men with power like Ismay’s. Transnational corporations were the new nations; chairmen and presidents their royalty. And Crowley was right in the king’s inner circle. It _had_ been good fun these past few years, meddling with the plans for the Titanic and her sisters, but he was boring of the shipping industry, and it wasn’t looking like there was much chance they were going to name a ship after him, despite him dropping the odd hint. He’d got his first-class ticket; once in America he felt like taking a good decade-long nap as a pat on the back for all his hard work.

The morning of the tenth of April had passed rather excitingly. There had been press conferences to give, photos to have taken, gourmet breakfast buffets to be consumed. Crowley was always a real hit with the reporters, which puzzled him. They seemed to find his irreverent responses witty. He’d been in excellent spirits as he joined Ismay and his wife outside the hotel at eleven o’clock.

The White Star Line Managing Director had been giving yet another interview, and Crowley had made to go over and join him, when a voice nearby stopped him in his tracks.

“Crrr _ow_ ley,” it purred from behind him, uncomfortably close, drawing out the ‘r’ in his name like a culinary delicacy and hardening the ‘ow’ in a startling snap. The voice was insidious, and alluring, coated with a glossy sheen of sophistication. It hinted at a cunning, refined, and wholly unpleasant owner. Recognition slithered through Crowley’s insides, feeling remarkably identical to dread. He reluctantly turned around.

“Ah,” he said as his fear was confirmed, then turned it into a nicer gesture by forcing the facsimile of a smile on his face. “Asmodeus, hi. Long time no see.”

The Archdemon smiled back, leering and appreciative, and cocked his perfectly coiffed head slightly as though to better admire the view. “Hello, Crowley,” he said. “It really has been far too long.” 

With his tan and his smirk and his slicked-back hair and his tailored pinstripe suit, Asmodeus was the Archdemon of Lust and Wrath, though clearly Pride was also highly favoured with him. If he were a human, Crowley had always thought, Asmodeus would be the kind to whiten his teeth, and shape his eyebrows, and moisturise his face conscientiously every morning and night. And be just as likely to bed the bellboys of the fancy hotels he stayed in as the maids.

“So, er, how’s the business going then?” said Crowley hurriedly, small-talking. He really didn’t want to know the reason why an Archdemon of Hell was visiting him. Hell was hardly known for handing out Demon of the Month awards or anything.

“It’s good,” Asmodeus smiled lazily, and Crowley could almost _feel_ those heavy-lidded eyes mentally undressing him. “Thank you. Though to let you in on a little secret, stock-broking is going to be a rather risky form of employment in the decades to come,” he gave an elegant shrug. “That is, unless you know the right people.” The head was cocked again, and the slow smile was back. “How about you, Crowley? How have you been keeping?” 

Crowley was feeling decidedly hot all of a sudden. “Me? Oh, I’m – I’m good. I’m great. I’ve been keeping busy, you know, just the usual, nothing big.”

“Good to hear.”

There was a terrible pause, awkward and uncomfortable only on Crowley’s part, who shuffled anxiously. This was even worse than the higher demon just spitting out what he’d come to say. At least then he’d _leave_. Crowley sighed internally.

“So what’s up, Az?”

Asmodeus seemed to be relishing his tension. His oh-so white smile broadened. “Oh, no real reason. We just thought we’d check to see if you were to be boarding the Titanic today.”

That was distinctly dodgy, Crowley decided. 

“Oh,” he said. There was another pause. “Because...?”

 “Beëlzebub is hoping most _ardently_ that you have some particularly infernal wiles up your sleeves for the trip. As do we all. It would be a most – ah – opportunistic occasion to assert our continuing influence over mankind’s activities, would you not agree?”

The hairs – and incorporeal feathers – on Crowley’s back were standing on end. Beëlzebub was involved? This went even higher than he’d originally thought. 

“Oh, yes,” he nodded quickly. “Very opportunistic.”

“I take it you do have some ideas? You’re ever so imaginative like that.”

Crowley wasn’t sure. The wiles he’d been planning had been more along the lines of hiding important pieces of navigational equipment, causing a coal shortage, changing the lyrics in the chapels’ hymnbooks, that sort of thing. Somehow, Asmodeus didn’t seem like the kind of demon who would appreciate those low-grade evils.  Crowley gave his superior a vaguely affirmative answer and hoped for the best. Asmodeus returned a small nod in apparent satisfaction.

“Very good. I know we can count on you, Crowley.”

“Did, er, did Beëlzebub happen to mention any specific infernal wiles they’ll be wanting me to execute?”

“We’ll keep you posted,” said Asmodeus smoothly. “The Dark Councils have not yet reached accordance, but in the meantime they’re placing all their faith in you. Mm, I must admit I do envy you, Crowley.  Knowing the Prince of Hell it is sure to be quite spectacular.”

Crowley mentally recoiled in horror. 

“Anyway, that’s all I came to say,” said Asmodeus. “You’ll be seeing me shortly, I would expect. I do hope you enjoy your trip.”

“I will. Er. Thanks, Az. Always good to see you,” Crowley could see Ismay gesturing over Asmodeus’ shoulder for him to come over, and he could have blessed the man. “Ah, I’m afraid I’ll have to get going, I’m wanted elsewhere.”

“That’s quite all right. Oh, and Crowley...?”

Crowley cringed, and turned around again.

Asmodeus smiled, slowly and tenderly, in a way that made the lesser demon feel sexually violated.

“It was very good to see you too, Crowley. I look forward to our next meeting.”

Crowley couldn’t help the shudder that ran through him at those words. He kept on walking, and when he had the chance to turn around again, the other demon had gone.

But now was not the time or place to dwell on an Archdemon’s unnerving ambiguity: a short ride in Ismay’s fabulous motor car later and the Titanic was before him, and the docks had come to life for the sailing day. Something like paternal pride swelled inside him at the sight of her, funnels steaming and decks packed, ready to leave home. Nonetheless, as usual, he feigned nonchalance at the sight of her: it was highly unsophisticated to seem impressed by splendour. The discretion offered by his shades meant he could sneak the odd peek, anyway.

Someone was waving madly in front of him. Then he heard his name, being called repeatedly.

“Crowley! Crowley!”

Crowley, surprised, looked in that direction.

By the stockings of Satan! It was Aziraphale!  

“Aziraphale!” Crowley exclaimed in delight. At once he spied his old friend in the crowds, looking less the figure of classical angelic elegance than ever in an olive-green three-piece suit and matching fedora. 

“Crowley, my dear boy!” 

“Aziraphale! I don’t bloody believe it!”

They reached each other and, unsure how two immortal entities who are technically friends greet each other after nine or so decades apart, made to embrace, only half-changed their minds and hesitated, then somewhat awkwardly settled for shaking hands. Aziraphale beamed at him, still clasping his hands.

“Crowley, it’s been far too long!”

“Only a century, angel,” laughed Crowley, but he was thrilled himself. “When was it? Eighteen twenty-four?”

“Vienna,” nodded Aziraphale, remembering. “Beethoven’s ninth was premiering.”

“Gosh, that was eighteen twenty-four? Fantastic after-party, if I recall correctly,” he grinned at the angel. “Fancy seeing you here, eh? I take it you’re sailing with us?” 

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, my boy. And naturally you’ll have the best suite on the ship courtesy of Mr Ismay, I take it?”

“Naturally, angel, naturally. That’s my style.”

“Oh dear. I do hope you haven’t tainted the poor man too much?”

Crowley smiled slyly. “I’ve got a job to do, angel, and I’m damned – quite literally – if I’m not good at it. And anyway, your side got Andrews, didn’t they?”

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale brightened. “He’s a remarkable man. He has such a steadfastly selfless and optimistic outlook on life, and such a kind and gentle temperament. A very agreeable fellow. They’re qualities that are difficult to find these days.”

“Well, one does one’s best,” Crowley spread his hands modestly.

“You aren’t here on, er, business, are you?” asked the angel, unsure all of a sudden.

For a moment Asmodeus’ diabolically good-looking face slithered into Crowley’s head, leering appreciatively at him, but he shoved the thought away. “Nope,” he managed cheerily, perhaps a quarter of a second too late. “Just for the fun. You?”

Until the Archdemon got back to him with his instructions, it wasn’t really a lie anyway, Crowley told himself, surprised at the guilt niggling in the back of his mind. He hoped that they weren’t going to involve anything _too_ unpleasant. 

Aziraphale looked a little relieved at his response. “Only for the usual. Represent Heaven, inspire mankind, and so forth.”

“Oh, good,” smiled Crowley. “That significantly simplifies the matter for us both then.” 

“Mister Crowley! Mister Crowley!” came a gratingly pompous voice from behind him, calling imperiously over the crowds. 

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut in exasperation before glancing back. Bruce Ismay was gesturing at him to come over, beckoning with his hands. He might as well have whistled or snapped his fingers.

“Duty calls,” sighed the demon, facing Aziraphale once more. “I’ve got to admit, I’m bloody sick of the man.”

Aziraphale made a sound that was probably intended to be sympathetic but came out more like _well-that’s-what-you-get-my-dear_. 

“Say,” said the demon, brightening all of a sudden. “Here’s an idea.” He linked an arm through Aziraphale’s, grinning devilishly at him, and when he spoke his words came out in a hiss of anticipation.

“How about I introduce you to my friendssss?”


	3. A Recommencement

Crowley had been planning on staying on good terms with Bruce Ismay after he left White Star Line, if only to get a lifetime’s*(1) free tickets for any future cruises. However, at the end of the third day on board, after three days of endlessly greeting affluent clients, of dining with different yet invariably airheaded people each meal, of being proudly exhibited by Ismay as his “enigmatic young advisor” like some kind of bloody pedigree poodle, of being constantly surrounded by inconsequential chatter, of having not been able to sneak away to see his angel even _once_ , Crowley was starting to remember again why he never hung around one human for too long.

* _(1) A human's, that is. Not a demon's._

He was, he supposed, enjoying himself. He’d mused aloud around Ismay how nice it would be for the company if Titanic could be coaxed into going just that little bit faster, and arrive Tuesday night instead of Wednesday. He’d instilled a little Pride and Shameless Self Interest in good ol’ Captain E.J. when Ismay had relayed Crowley’s ideas to him (“Titanic _must_ make headlines!”) to sway the seaman into pushing the engines (all in preparation for the major coal shortage Crowley would cause next week that would leave them having to be towed into New York a full week behind schedule).

He’d caused a mild panic as they left port by untying the little _New York_ boat from her moorings and sending her drifting their way. He’d hidden the look-outs’ binoculars and sent poor Fifth Officer Harold Lowe on a goose chase for them. He’d even, when he’d been feeling particularly bored and unoriginal, had a banana peel slither across the floor to position itself right beneath the foot of an unsuspecting waiter. These minor devilries had all been hugely entertaining but, in general, with the company he was forced to keep, he was just no longer enjoying himself.

Free tickets be damned. He’d had enough of this.

And so, on April thirteenth, two days after they’d left Queenstown and the English Channel behind, he had got up ridiculously early, before anyone else could be around to intercept him, and snaked his way over to Aziraphale’s rooms. The angel hadn’t been sleeping – someday Crowley was going to have to teach him that Pleasure of the World – so despite the early hour they had strolled over to the deserted Cafe Parisien on the Promenade Deck, bagged themselves the best Table-With-A-View, and promptly ordered breakfast.  They had languidly dined on the finest continental croissants with Oxford Marmalade – for Crowley – and Philadelphia cheese scones with cranberries*(2) – for Aziraphale – accompanied of course by Earl Grey tea and freshly squeezed oranges all the way from Sicily. They took their time, just an angel and a demon on the Titanic, catching up on a century spent apart. Wars and revolutions, inventions and innovations, architecture and archaeometry, pop music and popcorn... there was much to be discussed and debated. That had been five o’clock; by nine, the place had filled up too much to comfortably chat about Ineffability and Omniscience and whose side had coined instant coffee, so they had gone for a walk around the perimeter of the ship – which they ended up doing a further three times. 

* _(2) Despite the perplexed baker having only put in a batch of sultana ones that morning._

On the fourth, they ran into Thomas Andrews, the Master Shipbuilder, who had been writing something down in that omnipresent notebook of his. Crowley heard Aziraphale suck in a breath next to him, and mentally groaned. Any time the demon had made the mistake of bringing the man up in their conversations, Aziraphale would just go on and on and _on_ in a massive soliloquy about his kindness and selflessness and thoughtfulness and pureness of spirit and pureness of heart... It was sickening.

“A good afternoon to you, Mr Crowley,” smiled Andrews to him with that pleasant Irish accent of his, customarily tipping his hat to him.

Thomas Andrews was a handsome, broad-shouldered man somewhere in his late forties. He seemed – much to Crowley’s annoyance – to be perpetually cheerful: never without a pleasant smile, or a heartfelt word, even though the two of them didn’t so much see eye-to-eye as eye-to-foot. He’d proved impossible to tempt. Had he been born a millennium or two earlier, Crowley had always privately thought, the man would probably have been made a saint.

“Hi, Thomas,” returned Crowley decidedly uncomfortably, touching his own hat as he hid a frown. His skin always felt vaguely tingly being in close proximity to such a Good Soul. 

Beside him, Aziraphale was practically basking in the same effect. Crowley stared at him. Then he pulled himself together.

“Er, Thomas, have you had the pleasure of meeting my old friend and associate, Azirah Fell?”

Andrews smiled warmly at the angel and extended his notebook-free hand. “How do you do, Mr Fell?”

(Whatever must he write about in that little book of his? Wouldn’t it be awful if it fell into the wrong hands...?)

Aziraphale beamed, blushing, shaking the shipbuilder’s hand with more vigour than was strictly necessary. “It is a pleasure, Mr Andrews, an absolute pleasure. I am such an avid enthusiast of your work. I have been following your endeavours with much interest. You have a fine talent, my dear sir, truly. The Titanic is a credit to you. You must be terribly proud.”

A touch of pink brightened Mr Andrews’ cheeks as he looked down with a modest smile. “Thank you kindly, Mr Fell. It does my heart good to hear she is appreciated.”

“Oh, she is a work of art, Mr Andrews...”

And now they were talking over the top of him. _Well_ , that was just peachy then, thought Crowley jealously. If Aziraphale wanted to go have some private time with dear Andrews then Crowley might as well bugger off and seduce Ismay. God only knew the dirty bastard had been harbouring some seriously twisted fantasies about him for some time now. He suppressed a shudder.

“ _Okay_ then,” said Crowley loudly over the laugh the couple was now sharing. “I’ll just be off then, shall I?”

“Crowley?” Aziraphale was looking at him somewhat oddly. Or, rather, like he was somewhat odd. The angel turned back to Andrews. “I suppose we had better be off actually. It was lovely talking with you, Mr Andrews, I do hope to see more of you at dinner.”

“And to you too, Mr Fell,” Andrews smiled from one to the other. “Mr Crowley.” Crowley returned his blandly.

As soon as the shipbuilder was out of earshot, Aziraphale rounded on the demon. “Whatever has got into you, Crowley? You were ever so rude to the poor gentleman.”

Crowley glared back, then, taking the bull by the horns, “Do you mean to tell me you _fancy_ Thomas Andrews, Aziraphale?”

“Keep your voice down!” the angel hissed, mortified. “You silly old snake! What on Earth gave you that ridiculous notion?”

Crowley just raised his eyebrows above his dark glasses.

“ _Crowley_!” Aziraphale said sharply. “I’m an angel –”

“So?”

“ _So_ , it’s just _wrong_. He’s a human. My role is but to guide and inspire and –”

“Waitwaitwait,” Crowley held up a hand. He stared seriously at the angel, stopped walking to do so. “By that philosophy, are you telling me you’ve never...” he twisted his long pale hands through the air expressively as he sought the right verb, “... _been_ with a human?” 

Aziraphale stared back. His eyebrows lowered in puzzlement. “Been _what_ with a human?”

“You know... like... _been_ with them. Biblically,” Crowley tried again. Then, with an exasperated sigh: “ _Romantically_.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale looked a little sheepish. He gazed across the railings that they found themselves canted against, taking in the shimmering ocean stretched as far as even their inhuman eyes could see. It was pinking in hue now, the late afternoon ripening to evening. “Well, to an extent, yes.”

“‘To an extent?’” 

The angel gave his companion a withering look. “Obviously _not_ to the

extent your unholy demonic tongue is insinuating,” he said haughtily. “My friends were in need of comfort, and I delivered it.”

There was a wicked humour in Crowley’s smirk. “So, what, your extent is a hug?”

Aziraphale shot him a sidelong look, but he had to turn to hide his own smile. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, dear. No, I have never had sexual intercourse with a human being. Lust is a sin.”

“Yeah, well, so’s gluttony, but as I do recall you scoffed four of those little scone-things this morning.”

“They were miniature!”

“ _And_ we’re never hungry even to begin with.” 

Aziraphale was in no position to argue the point. “All right then,” he said, slightly miffed. “We seem to have digressed somewhat. What was it you were saying before?”

Crowley tilted his head, stared out into the hanging orb of the sun, not quite setting. “Er.” 

“Evidently nothing of importance then,” said Aziraphale hurriedly, having remembered. 

Crowley opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he was about to say was driven from his head by what sounded like the fanfare that precedes the arrival of a king, being performed by a trumpet barely two metres away. Crowley hissed in pain, he and the angel both covering their ears as the announcement for dinner continued.

“Naaaargh,” he said angrily, summing up both their feelings. “Bloody idiot. That was my idea, too.”

“What, to deafen everyone?”

“No, to majorly piss them off.” Crowley turned to glare at the trumpet’s player, who had finished his little solo and looked all pleased with himself. Then he sighed, deeply and dramatically. “I could really do without dinner tonight. It is just _yakyakyak_ from all sides, you can’t escape it. You wouldn’t _believe_ how dim-witted the upper crust of upper-class society is. Or maybe you would. You’re a first-classer yourself, after all.”

Aziraphale ‘mm’d agreeably, deciding not to mention the 1671 edition of _Paradise Regained_ he’d had to part with in order to procure his ticket onboard*(3).

* _(3) He could have got twice as much for his first edition of Paradise Lost, but couldn’t bear to part with it. John Milton had given it to him free of charge as a thank you for all of Aziraphale’s helpful inputs along the way._

Crowley appeared to brighten a little; the characteristic spark of mischief had returned to his face. “Sssay, fancy coming back to my suites instead, ordering room service, and getting totally and utterly sozz—”

“Mister Crowley!” said a sharp voice from behind him. “Where have you been all day? I’ve had my men look for you.”

Ismay, standing behind Crowley, didn’t see the demon’s face wrinkle up into an expression of deep resignation. Aziraphale almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Crowley raised his eyebrows at his friend, then turned around in a quick elegant spin that flared the tails of his frock coat out, and smiled lazily.

“Bruce, hi. How’s it going?” 

Ismay was not looking pleased. His ridiculous moustache bristled as he sniffed haughtily. “Mister Crowley, as an employee under my name and a representative to White Star Line, in future I would expect you –”

Seeing that Crowley had opened his mouth, no doubt to say something irreverent that would only dig himself in deeper, Aziraphale came to stand beside him and smoothly interrupted the Managing Director.

“Mr Ismay, I do apologise, but it is I who is responsible for dear Crowley’s absence all day,” he said graciously. He cast a quick glance at his friend, then went on. “I asked for a tour of the ship this morning at lunch, and I’m afraid we became rather distracted and lost track of the time. I’m awfully sorry if this was in any way an inconvenience to you.”

Ismay was looking at him somewhat disdainfully, but appeared mollified. “Hm. Yes. Fell, is it?”

“That is correct, Mr Ismay.”

“Yes. Well,” now he turned back to Crowley. “I’ll see you at dinner then, Crowley,” he touched his hat politely to Aziraphale. “Mr Fell.”

“Mr Ismay,” Aziraphale returned the gesture.

Ismay left. A soon as he was gone, Crowley turned to the angel.

“Hey, fancy joining me for dinner with my little pals instead?”

Aziraphale’s brows rose in surprise. “You’re inviting _me_ to join the upper crust of the upper class?”

“It’s nothing personal, you understand,” Crowley was smiling snakishly. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” he added quickly, showing his palms in the universal ‘no worries, it’s cool’ sign. “But, well, what with Thomas Andrews joining us tonight I thought you might...?”

“Oh, well, if Thomas Andrews is coming then of course I’ll join you,” Aziraphale joked, humouring his friend. “Gosh, what company I’ll be in. Yes, of course I’ll join you, my boy. Shall we arrange a time and a place to meet up?”

Crowley named them. They grinned at each other and turned to head to their respective rooms to dress. “Oh, and Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale turned round at the top of the stairs leading to C Deck. “Yes, Crowley?”

Crowley’s grin widened teasingly. “Manifest an Omega or something, would you?”

Aziraphale laughed in bemusement. “Why? And what in Heaven and Earth is an Omega?”

“It’s a _watch_ , angel,” said Crowley amusedly. “A good one. They live and breathe money, these people, so just act like you’re into that stuff and you’ll fit right in.” He grinned again at the angel, and, standing there silhouetted against the now setting sun, with that sharp toothy smile, hands on his hips, wearing an expression of fond exasperation on his pale handsome face, there was something... _iconic_ about him. 

Aziraphale smiled at his friend, and, turning the hand he was using to shield his eyes from the sun into a salute, he brought it down like a private to his sergeant. “I’ll do my best, dear Crowley,” he smiled.

Crowley smiled back. Then they both turned their different ways, and prepared for the ordeal that would be the high table in a first-class dinner.


	4. An Irish Party In Third Class

There were a great many reasons why Crowley tried as often as demonically possible to be late. It’s fashionable, for one. It’s also very annoying for the receiving end left checking their timepieces and scanning their surroundings for the fourth time. And, of course, it also meant that he was never left feeling flustered or rushed if he actually _was_ running behind schedule. Not, of course, that he was ever anything as remotely uncollected as rushed or flustered. He was a demon, after all. 

On the night of April thirteenth 1912, however, Crowley was late for his da—rendezvous, _rendezvous_ – with Aziraphale simply out of habit. He _had_ wanted to be on time, he realised, as he rushed, flustered, over to the Grand Staircase above the Dining Hall where his angel was waiting.

His angel was, of course, already there. Amidst the glamorous couples or small groups politely chattering as they swept down either of the two branches of the staircase before joining in the middle, the women exquisite and restrained on the arms of their comparatively blandly tuxedoed men, Aziraphale stood still in its centre. He was staring up at the grandfather clock in front of him – not out of impatience, it seemed, but to admire the manner in which its exquisite woodwork had been carved, for his gaze was lower than its face.

The last time Crowley had seen his friend in formal attire had been 1749, at the celebrations for the opening of the Edinburgh-Glasgow stagecoach service*(4). Thankfully, tonight Aziraphale was not still trying to promote the stylishness and practicalities of the kilt: like Crowley he was dressed simply in white tie, and looked astonishingly elegant – for him. It totally transformed him. Even his curls seemed to be behaving themselves.

* _(4) It had been one of their few collaborative projects. Aziraphale wanted to connect Edinburgh to Glasgow in the hope that the goodness of its people would positively influence the sinners of Glasgow; likewise Crowley had hoped his sinners would corrupt Aziraphale’s beloved Edinburgh. Neither proclaimed involvement in the 1822 Edinburgh-Glasgow railway link, but for these same reasons both approved of it._

Crowley, remembering himself, his lateness, ran a hand over his oiled hair – it was forever falling down now that he was wearing the top layers slightly longer – straightened his little bow tie, and forced himself to adjust his hasty stride into one more casual and respectable. When he reached the top of the staircase, Aziraphale turned and smiled as he too took in his friend.

Crowley came closer until he was two steps above, smirking down with his hands clasped behind his back. Safely veiled behind their usual shades, his eyes continued to take in this rather radiant new being in front of him.

“You look ravishing, angel,” he said, masking the truthfulness of his words behind what he hoped came across as a teasing grin.

“And you also, my dear,” smiled the angel graciously, then added as though in afterthought, with a little accepting raise of brows, “though that’s certainly nothing new.”

Crowley’s own brows rose in surprise at the unexpected compliment. Then he laughed shortly, once more hiding behind the comforting facade of nonchalance. He took the last step down, made to take Aziraphale’s arm, then thought better of it. Society would be scandalised. Instead, he extended a hand courteously in the direction of their destination. “Shall we?”

They walked alongside each other together down the many staircases to the dining hall, Crowley gossiping about the people they would be eating with whilst Aziraphale shook his head fondly at himself and feigned interest.

At seven o’clock everyone took their seats. Crowley really did sit at the head table: there was Ismay, Andrews, the Guggenheims, the Astors, Colonel Gracie, the Countess of Rothes; people even Aziraphale had vaguely heard of. Crowley made sure to introduce him to them all, and include him in their conversations, but he needn’t have worried: despite the odd blunder or two, Aziraphale was readily accepted and, in so far as the demon could tell beneath the mask of social decorum, seemed to be enjoying himself.

Aziraphale supposed he was enjoying himself. He was amused by the dynamics between the people around the table: how they could never say what they really meant, how it all had to be masked beneath propriety and wit; he found his head moving back and forth between any two speakers as though he was watching a polo match. It was fascinating.

Much to his pleasure he had found Thomas Andrews seated on his other side. Aziraphale had picked up enough about the man’s character to see him as a perpetually cheerful sort of fellow, so was filled with dismay when the shipbuilder appeared worried and even more introverted than usual. He asked his friend lowly what the matter was as the caviar was being served and the others were distracted.

A spot of pink appeared on each of Andrews’ smooth cheeks. “Oh, it is nothing. Only a trivial matter,” he said, brushing off the concern with a little wave of his hand. Then, sensing Aziraphale’s willing to listen, and feeling in himself the willingness to confide, he found himself adding after a beat, “My – ah – my notebook. I seem to have mislaid it.”

Aziraphale remembered that he had never seen the man without his smart little journal to hand. He assumed that it was what the shipbuilder used for noting down any adjustments or improvements he had noticed as Titanic sailed on. To have lost it, and all his ideas, must be devastating. He told Andrews this, with such caring genuineness that the other man actually did feel a little comforted. But this news troubled Aziraphale: Andrews was so careful with that book, anyone could see that...

Then it hit him, of course. The answer. The reason. He turned slowly and deliberately to look to his left.

Where Crowley, halfway through a forkful of his starter of angels-on-horseback, was suddenly overcome by a mysterious fit of choking.

Aziraphale would deal with him later.

Dinner lasted a whole two hours. By the time the last course was cleared, Aziraphale was mentally exhausted by the game of propriety that had so amused him earlier. Now it just seemed ridiculous, and he was tired of it. And perhaps just tired. He’d had such fun with Crowley today; he really wished they could have just gone back to his suites, ordered room service, and consumed copious amounts of wine.

Crowley was also thoroughly sick of the first-classers, but, unlike Aziraphale, was more accustomed to the mental taxing of such company – or rather, the lack of it. Finally, at nine o’clock, the gentlemen stood up, thanked the ladies for their company, and made their way over to the smoking room for brandies and political chitchat. Ismay called to Crowley from several chairs away, inquiringly, but Crowley declined: there were days when he would oblige the man and join him, then spread rumours and false superstitions all night, but tonight he had an angel to entertain. 

The aforementioned angel was conversing with Thomas Andrews, _again_. Crowley caught the end of their conversation as Aziraphale bid his friend goodnight.

“Chin up, my dear Thomas,” – oh, so they were on first name terms now – “I’m quite certain it will turn up. I do promise to keep both eyes peeled for it though; it can’t have got very far.  Cheerio.”

Crowley snuck up behind him, turned in bidding farewell.

“What’s say you and I get out of here, huh angel?” 

Aziraphale’s shoulders shot up in a spasm of surprise. “Crowley! Stop hissing in my ear!” but he was smiling now, smiling at him, all dimples and bright eyes and ample rosy cheeks. Crowley was surprised to find himself noticing that, the details of the smile. They’d been friends – or adversaries, he supposed – for so long that it seemed odd how he could still see new sides to the angel. 

He quickly got a grip on himself and grinned back. “I’ll take that as a yes, then. Come on, let’s go back to my place, yeah?”

They were standing to the aft of the ship, on the starboard side, walking in companionable silence beneath the blanket of twinkling diamond stars above them (which had, whilst most certainly not ceased to amaze, at least ceased to surprise, and so was on this night given little attention by our angel and demon) when they first heard it. They paused, listening to the strange muffled cacophony of sounds: shouts, singing, laughter, music – fiddles, pipes, drums – the occasional smash of something like a bottle, miscellaneous thumps, all intermingled together and ringing with joy. Then, cheers and applause that buzzed and sang.

“Sounds like a party,” mused Aziraphale, nonchalantly.

Crowley smiled slowly. His plans for the night were suddenly looking up. “Sounds like _fun_ ,” he said.

~

 

The Irish party in third-class was in full swing. There was music, played by a cheery group of red-faced third-classers; there was beer drafted straight out of the barrels; there was dancing; and, above all, there was _atmosphere._ There was an infectious air of optimism filling the room. These people were far from their homes, and setting up a new life in a foreign land, and there was so much for them to be fearful for, but for now, on their journey, they could just raise their glasses and raise the roof and have one hell of a party to simply celebrate the joy of the moment. These people were poor, in their worn and mended and drab clothes, and their sun-darkened skins, and their unsheltered existences, but tonight they were happy, and they were free _._

 And amidst the Irishmen, the Englishmen, the Scotsmen, the Frenchmen, the Norwegians and Spaniards and Polish and Danish and the rest, there was also one angel and one demon, listening with surprised appreciation to said band, and drinking said beer from dirty fingerprint-smudged glasses, and attempting to dance amongst the said peoples on the slippery makeshift dancefloor, and taking in said joyous atmosphere none too soberly.

The cheap alcohol was going to their heads: angels and demons have no instinct for dancing but there they were, Aziraphale gavotting away to himself*(5), Crowley flicking his hair and spasmodically moving his feet in what he was pretty damn sure looked stunningly cool. Around Aziraphale people laughed in delight and tried to join in with this strange and oddly elegant dance; around Crowley, they exchanged sidelong glances of a kind of amused wariness, like wild animals meeting some strange new beast and not knowing for sure whether this creature is at the same level of the food chain as they are. And they _were_ both strange new creatures. They were _first-class_ , down here rolling in the muck of steerage swine. They may have unbuttoned their collars, and loosened their shirts, and discarded their blazers and choking ties, but their skin was still white; their palms still unscarred; their shoes still un-scuffed.  All around them people couldn’t help but stare, some in resentment, others in reverence, and how could you not? Him with the sleek dark hair hanging over his circular-lensed shades, swaying like a charmed snake, and him his opposite, with the blond curls and endearing smile, who would wholeheartedly apologise for standing on someone’s foot or knocking their drink into them. Gradually the opinions of the third class met in the middle, and the strange duo could feel the atmosphere around them changing into one of cheerful acceptance.

* _(5) Gavottes, it should be noted, require a partner. Therefore, since Crowley had outright refused, Aziraphale was dancing with air._

After the fourth song ended – a lively jig of fiddles and Uileann pipes and spoons and accordions that had seen even the most reluctant dancer tapping his feet and clapping his hands – Crowley and Aziraphale, gratuitously out of breath and pink in the cheeks, heads not so such swimming as doggy-paddling, decided to sit the next one out.

Crowley searched for a moment in the crowd, then leaned over two fellows having an arm-wrestling on a barrel of beer to reach their glasses, taking care to stand on a couple of feet. He returned to Aziraphale, who was grinning like a loon at him for apparently absolutely no reason, and the two gulped down their warm grainy beverage from where they stood like it was a 1787 Chateau Margaux*(6). The drink was creamy and bitter and, surprisingly, not bad, given the mysteriously salty aftertaste.

* _(6) Which, actually, it wasn’t. When in Rome, and all that._

Crowley seemed to be determined to drain his, leaning farther and farther back to reach the last drops, until any human – especially with his blood alcohol levels – would have fallen flat on his back. Aziraphale watched this strange feat of balance and suppleness with an expression of drunken fascination.

Crowley resurfaced, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand with dignity.

“Tha’ _sss_ good _sss_ tuff,” he said, acclaiming the inside of his empty glass, down which the remains of a foamy head was sliding, with surprised approval.

Aziraphale giggled. “Crowley, you’re hissing!” He watched as the demon’s glass refilled itself.

“I know. It happen _sss_ when alcohol’s around.” 

Around them, people were staring, though not in disapproval, at this odd display. “My dear, you really would think that after almost six millennia, you would have grown out of your... your disconcerting little habit.”

“Ah, but I _hasn’t_ grown up,” Crowley hissed, holding up a finger the way one holds a candle to shed light on something. “We don’t grow, y’see.” Then, “Aziraphale, you’ve got a beerstache.”

“I have?” Aziraphale searchingly felt his lips. “Oh yes, so I do,” He wiped his hands on his shirt; it was already a lost cause as it was.

Crowley, meanwhile, had seized an opportunity and stuck out a foot, tripping some guy into a canoodling couple and spilling beer over the two. He chuckled to himself as the girl shrieked. That one never got old.

“Oh, Crowley?”

Crowley turned around again to lift his eyebrows at Aziraphale in expectation, who appraised him as reprovingly as his swaying vision could above the tops of his glasses.

“I know you stole Thomas Andrews’ notebook.”

Behind them one of the men arm-wrestling had slammed his opponent’s wrist against the table, sending several beers flying. “Two out of three, mate, two out of three!” grinned the winner sportingly to the loser, who beamed at him and replied in broken English.

Crowley looked back to Aziraphale and reacted instinctively with retaliation. “I didn’t _sssteal_ anything,” he waved his hands expressively, thwacking some turban-clad fellow behind him on the nose. “He left it lying around, so I ju _sss_ t picked it up. That’s not stealing, that’s ju _sss_ t... picking things up.” Left lying around, as in, lying in his pocket, he thought with a smidgen of guilt that was soon gone. Andrews had had it coming. Putting all your eggs in the same basket and that. It had been an entertaining read, though. Honestly, he builds the largest ship in the world and something as small as the _number of screws_ in hat-hooks preoccupies him. The man was a perfectionist all right. Crowley had had fun doodling little sketches in the margins, and smudging ink over long and complicated calculations.

Aziraphale opened his mouth to reply, but two kids banged past him and the contents of his glass flew into the air. By some miracle (it was indeed a miracle), not a drop landed on him. Aziraphale overcame his surprise and straightened his glasses with dignity. “Dear me, that was rude.”

“Excellent, wasn’t it?” Crowley was grinning. “You okay?”

“Hm? Oh – oh yes, I’m fine. Thank you, dear.”

Behind them somewhere the band’s bagpipes were drawing out one last long note as the song ended. There were groans and protests as no new song resumed. The angel and the demon turned around.

“Fiddler’s got to take a piss!” the fiddler yelled as he stood up, laughing at the reception. “I’m only human, boy-o!” the rest of the band, grinning but clearly worn out, were gratefully accepting the round of beers brought over as their fiddler excused himself, and the dancers, disappointed but understanding, began to drift from the floor to locate their own drinks or friends.

And Crowley, ever the opportunist, raised a serpentine eyebrow to himself, and _hmm_ ’d.

“Oh no,” said Aziraphale suspiciously. “I know that look.”

Crowley turned back to look at him and smiled, sly and secretive. “Oh, not a wile,” he told the angel reassuringly, before raising his brows musingly to himself and adding a touch guiltily, “ _per se_.” He grinned again, excitement mounting within him now. “Stay here for a sec, would you?” he pushed his drink into Aziraphale’s free hand and before the angel had time to object was marching off to catch up to the fiddler, his eyes and mind aglow with the joys of pre-executed mischief.

 


	5. Anthony Crowley's Song

The violin was old and well-used, with mismatched strings and the varnish at the base worn from years of contact against acidic human skin. It was scruffy, and smelt strange, and it was a far cry from the pristine Stradivarius old Antonio had made for him in 1690, but Crowley didn’t mind. Neither did the fiddler to whom it belonged. He’d been more than happy*(7) to lend this strange gentleman his beloved instrument; he _was_ quite tired, now that he came to think of it, he really could do with a break...

* _(7) i.e. for some unimaginable reason unable to object._

Nor had the other band members complained, though none of them were quite sure why. Why not let this lithe young fellow, with his shiny shoes and his shiny hair and his shiny glasses, play a song or two? They were sure he was very good, though why they were sure, they weren’t sure.

Around the band the formerly redundant dancers looked on in interest, and others gathered round in curiosity. Leaning against a pillar with a drink in each hand, Aziraphale watched, and tried to summon the disapproval he supposed he was meant to be feeling.

Crowley, done meeting his acquaintance with the violin, nodded cheerily to each of the musicians. A guitar, a set of Uileann pipes, a Bodhrán drum, an accordion, a banjo-like thing, a whistle, some spoons, a spare fiddle... It looked good.

He took his place in the centre where the former fiddler had stood. A hush seemed to have fallen over the room, and not just because the music had stopped, but because an awful lot of people had stopped to listen now. They were waiting, waiting to see what this strange stranger would play.

Crowley raised his bow, waited for further silence, and began.

His melody was slow and languorous, like a record protracted for longer than it should be on its player; like a man stalking in comical slow-motion. It was insidious, and slinky; it teased its audience by pausing a tenth of a second too long before the next note, keeping them hanging there waiting for more, never quite showing its full self to them. The silence between the notes was music itself. It would flicker and undulate, spiral around for a few sets of chords, then stop, short – unpredictable – before starting up again, that same swaying pattern. Then, suddenly, the violinist’s elbow shot up in a quick flick of a note before the bow slithered across the instrument once more, and that continuous yet sinuous tune was starting again, just that little bit faster.

The music he made was rolling now, sensuous, ever-so-slowly creeping up on its audience, all of whom stood there, drinks halfway to their lips, cigarettes burning to their fingers. The drummer had tentatively joined in now, trusting the regular background beat enough to put a few hits in, and it reinforced Crowley’s melody with structure, a note to return to, a handhold for the listeners in this unpredictable song. The bagpiper, too, then found the confidence to join in, emulating Crowley’s violin. The two played together, the piper respectfully quieter, his tune a condiment to Crowley’s substance. How he knew what to play, how he knew when Crowley was going to change the tempo, stop suddenly to flick up in a series of high striking chords, he couldn’t have said.

The audience were swaying now. It wasn’t hypnosis, or possession – it was instinct. It was a dance, and the dancefloor was amassed with movement now.

Crowley could sense the crescendo of this verse reaching its climax. It came in ebbs and flows, waves pushing up and down the beach wetting a few extra inches of sand with each new swash. 

 _There_. Crowley could sense it, sense the climax; he silenced his bow with one elegant flick of the elbow, and, grinning, enjoying every cell of his being, mentally handed the reigns over to the competent piper, who somehow was prepared for this and began an epic solo.

Crowley skipped across to Aziraphale, knowing he had only seconds.

Aziraphale was pink in the cheeks with his enthusiasm. 

“My dear boy, I knew you could play, but I never knew you could compose!”

Crowley cackled at that. “This isn’t composing!” he shouted over the band and the dancers, who were now clapping in time to the beat, “This is bloody good improvising!”

And then he took Aziraphale by the hand and dragged him towards the stage.

“Crowley! Crowley, no!” exclaimed the angel in self-conscious horror. “Crowley, don’t you dare –”

“I need a violinist to duet with!” Crowley grinned, unrelenting, as he shoved the surplus violin into the angel’s hands. “Come on, angel, you’re better than Elgar and Liszt put together, I need you!”

And with that, out of time, the demon jumped back into his position just as the piper finished his moment in the limelight; Crowley shot back in with one long sliding note and resumed, catching back in with the beat even as it continued to increase in speed. 

Aziraphale stood there on the sideline, the instrument in his hand as unfamiliar yet familiar as he would imagine, for some reason, a flaming sword to feel like, and felt inside his ancient being a great welling of energy, of invincibility, of euphoria. It had been so long since he’d performed, and he could remember how it felt: the joy of playing, the looks on the faces of the crowd: the awe, amazement, wonder. He stroked the violin in his hands. So familiar...

And now Crowley was reaching the climax of yet another crescendo; his elbow shot up and down four times in quick succession as he lanced out four quick notes, and each one ran in sync with the angel’s heart, pounding in its pre-performance nerves. There was a brief half-second of silence, and it was like the silence that follows the bells of New Year’s: it was like blinking before the sun and the edges remaining etched, throbbing hazily, in your vision. The dancers didn’t even have time to hold their breath, though they all knew in that one moment to stop moving, and stare instead at the gentleman with the unforgettable violin. In that one half of a second, it seemed that the entire Titanic fell silent: that every class, every steward, every porter, every stoker, pressed their ears against the General Room of third class and listened with every fibre of their being. The silence lasted half a second, but it felt like a slice of eternity.

Crowley’s solo thus began.

He was still the same – still a lithe, pale, man-shaped being, with shirt sleeves up at his elbows and braces twisted – but then, he wasn’t. He moved with inhuman speed, feet firmly immobile on the floor but his upper body twisting with the tempo of his song. His elbows were everywhere as he played, his bow shooting up and down and across so fast his hand became blurred. He played with a passion that left all who heard it breathless.

Crowley looked up, flicked his hair back to see, and then beckoned with his head to Aziraphale as his hands remained busy. 

The violin was suddenly at Aziraphale’s clavicle, and a bow – though Crowley had not given him one – was in his hand. Every self-conscious concern seemed to have vanished as he took up the space Crowley had made beside him. He joined right in with the demon, didn’t slide in but _leapt_ in, became Crowley’s worthy equal. They duetted together, the same piece, Aziraphale’s a note higher, so that their music weaved itself together. There was no time, no Titanic, no Heaven or Hell; no Good or Evil. There was only Crowley, and Aziraphale, and their violins, and the music that linked their souls together, wove them until they were indistinguishable from each other... Whose bow was whose? Whose note was whose?  They were neither angel, nor demon, nor human: they were – and they both reached this word in their head at the same time, both felt it sing in their chests and their hearts and their blood – _soulmates_.

On and on their duet went, perfectly in time; a skill not inhuman, but that of a being that has lived much, much longer than any human could, and so has had an awfully long time to practise.

And then in a burst of sound and emotion the rest of the band joined

in again, like a sonic boom, or an eclipse, or a head rush, dazzling and disorientating and indescribable, and the room sang once more with the clapping of hands and the stamping of feet as the dancing resumed. Crowley and Aziraphale, standing side by side, their bows whipping back and forth, weren’t even looking at their violins, or at the expressions on the faces of their audience – they were staring at each other, grinning wholeheartedly at their opposite, their hands a separate entity to their minds, which were reaching out to each other.

Crowley was raising his brows over his glasses at Aziraphale encouragingly, as if to say, _after you, angel_. His smile was enrapturing.  

And Aziraphale laughed and obligingly took the lead, striking out a series of flickering whistling notes as Crowley slipped to the background and played one note repeatedly in whirls, complimenting each other perfectly. It was the final crescendo now, the build-up to the long shuddering climax that would lift the Titanic out of the water and into the sky. It was the sprint to the finish, that long last stretch where every ounce of energy can afford to be spent.

And Crowley and Aziraphale were inexhaustible.

Faster and faster they went: the music and the musicians, the dance and the dancers, Crowley and Aziraphale’s violins constantly leading the way. Higher then lower, against each other then together, gentle and twisting then hard and exact. How long had he been playing? Could it really have only been five minutes? How was that possible?

So close now, so close; the end was in sight, it was pressing against them, it was a swim upstream to reach it, to align the notes and tempo together. Every instrument was being strummed or hit or blown or pumped to its maximum now, every human who played them giving it their all. It was like delirium, and it was like ecstasy.

Aziraphale’s violin called to Crowley in a high enquiring chord; Crowley responded, and the two beings grinned at each other, sensing it together, sensing the timing, sharing that secret between their locked gaze. Back and forth the exchange went, each note a half-second behind the other, chasing its coy lover, leaping playfully to catch up. Then finally – _finally_ – colliding as flawlessly and fluidly as interlocking fingers within the clasped hands of something infinitely deeper than mere friendship, the two parallels became one, and it was the two of them together who ended the great song, with three short flicks of their bows, the sounds like the skidding feet of an athlete who, crossing the finishing line, tries to slow but has too much momentum. And then, as the rest of the band drew themselves to a close, one last note from the violinists, one long, perfectly executed note, sharp and steady as a blade, sounded throughout the hall, shuddering to a halt, and before the duo could even raise their bows the entire third class had erupted into cheers and applause, and Titanic herself was joining in.


	6. The Dawn

Crowley and Aziraphale were the stars of the night. They were praised and congratulated; they were bought drinks and handed smokes; they were ogled at by fresh-faced young girls, and the occasional fresh-faced young boy; they were asked and asked and asked if they could please, _please_ , play one more song, just one more? And did they do birthday parties? And where had they come from? And which composer was their greatest inspiration? And, of course, _who on Earth were they?_  

Neither was fully comfortable beneath such attention, but then, the Moment now having cooled to leave mere reality once more – leave the _afterwards_ : the afterglows and the after-images and the terrifying, tantalising, inevitable after-effects – neither was fully comfortable with leaving just yet, and being alone together. They were each still trying to make sense of what had just happened – even as, deep within, they already knew the answer, and knew that they had only to admit it.  

It was strange. To be so completely and utterly happy, yet at the same time completely and utterly scared to death.

They stayed close to each other, not quite touching, but close enough that anyone who was watching could see it – the tenderness in which they held the other with their eyes, the total devotion that was so evident on their faces; the knowing glances they shared, as secretive and complex as a foreign language that only they understood – and the people of third class knew instinctively not to ask them, not to pry, to leave them be. They had earned that much.

Later, at the urging of several decidedly hopeful middle-aged women, they danced some more. This time on the floor they weren’t just accepted, or tolerated, as before, but included: their hands were held as everyone linked to form a circle; they were jigged with and imitated by admirers of their strange dancing; one small girl, perhaps five years old, even tugged on Crowley’s shirt and asked him shyly if she could stand on his feet as he danced, just like her papa let her. 

Crowley had looked at Aziraphale and laughed. “Sorry kid, not really my thing,” he told her, and it was true. Hell wasn’t very big on making small children happy; if anything he should be the one standing on _her_ feet. But he frowned all the same at her crestfallen little face.

“Er,” he tried again, brow furrowing as he thought. “Er, well, perhaps –”

“– perhaps just once then?” Aziraphale suggested. 

“Actually, angel, I was going to suggest she dance with _y_ —”

“Ah, but she asked for _you_ , my dear Crowley,” beamed Aziraphale, then, to the girl, “What’s your name, little one?”

“Cora,” she told him shyly, staring up at them both with big blue eyes. She looked so adorably innocent that Crowley wondered if he’d singe where he touched her.

“Well, young Cora, I know that Mister Crowley here would be simply delighted to have you as his partner. Isn’t that right, dear?”

“Er,” said Crowley.

“Superb,” said Aziraphale. “I’ll hold your drink, shall I?”

Crowley, it had to be said, probably danced _better_ with a five-year-old shrieking with delight on his feet as he shuffled about. It gave his awkward movements some excuse for their gracelessness. And, though he would have never admitted it after guinea-pigging every method in the How to Be the Best Ever Spanish Inquisitor guidebook, it wasn’t actually that bad. Borderline fun, even.

Mostly though, the angel and the demon danced with each other. Or, rather, they orbited one another.

They didn’t seem to realise that they were doing it, this non-dance, as they faced each other on the dancefloor and absentmindedly swayed to their own beat, occasionally swinging a wrist up or shuffling their feet as though in afterthought. What exactly was occurring within their thoughts as they did was impossible to tell. They never touched, but their hands would move compulsively of their own accord every now and again, as though reaching out but then remembering their place; and, as though on a loop, they would become slowly and unconsciously closer and closer to each other as they moved, until they noticed the inches between their bodies and drew back, looking down in embarrassment, before meeting the eyes of the other again, and then beginning the cycle all over once more.

When they eventually left, the hours having waned away swifter than minutes, the pre-dawn sky was a hazy blue-grey, restlessly anticipating the coming sunrise. There was a ghostly mist glazing the surface of the water that curled up and around as the ship sliced onward across the ocean. 

It was chilly: they wrapped their thin dinner jackets tighter around themselves before remembering to miracle an aureole of warmth. They were drunk, but clear-headed enough to appreciate the peace of the morning, so the tune they sang – the band’s last one, a popular hit from the Irish mainland – was sung softly on the tide of their steaming breaths:

 

_We set sail at half past one;_

_Looking for a new to-morrow._

_Don’t know when we’re coming home;_

_So we’ll drink and we’ll dance and we’ll drown our sorrows._

 

They hummed the chorus together, which mostly consisted of a series of cheery ‘hey la-di-hey’s, smiling absent-mindedly to themselves, acutely aware of the other’s presence. They walked side by side, still not touching, but in their inebriation they might sway a little and occasionally knock into the other, and the other one would reach out a gentle hand to steady him. The salty air, and their own willpower, sobered them up as they continued down the deck, until eventually the silly singing became too awkward, and companionable silence ensued. 

There was a moment’s still-slightly-drunken confusion when they found themselves somehow at the very bow of the ship, unable to go further.

“Say, angel, I reckon we’ve taken a wrong turning somewhere,” said Crowley musingly, looking up at the threads of ropes tightly strung above them.

“I think you’re right, my dear,” returned Aziraphale, unconcernedly glancing behind them. “We must have gone right past the reception.”

There was a pause, quiet except for the distant thundering of the water beneath them as Titanic ploughed onward. Crowley felt the last of the alcohol leave his bloodstream in that tight, uncomfortable squeezing sensation, akin to the manner in which a sponge is wrung out by short-tempered hands. Beside him, Aziraphale was also wincing from the same effect.

Crowley strode forward and manoeuvred his way around the ropes and bollards and ‘No Passengers Beyond This Point’ signs until the angle of the ship’s nose was curving around his body, the railings cold through his clothing where he pressed against them. He held the bars with both hands and leaned far over, stared down some twenty feet below at the frothy torrent of roiling ocean spraying the ship’s flanks. It was difficult to gauge what speed they were travelling at with no landmark features to focus on, but judging by how the air rippled his shirt and whipped his hair back from his face when everywhere else on the Atlantic was so still, it had to be fast. 

Good, he thought. That coal shortage should arrive any day now.

He heard Aziraphale come to join him, so straightened up and shuffled over to make room. He swallowed audibly.

“Nice morning, huh?” he said, awkwardly.

The angel rested his wrists across the railings, steepled his fingers. He looked up at the sky; also avoiding meeting the eyes of his companion. “Yes, it is,” he said. “It’s going to be a magnificent sunrise, when it comes.”

Quiet again. Crowley moistened his lips.

“The party was pretty good, wasn’t it? Those third-classers, they... they really know how to party, don’t they.”

“Mm, oh yes, certainly,” said Aziraphale, nodding emphatically. “The, ah, the music was... very good.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was. The, uh, the whatchamacallit, the bagpipe guy. He had some serious talent.”

“Yes. He did. It’s a beautiful instrument.”

The silence descended again. 

“Crowley?”

Crowley turned. “Hm?”

A moment’s hesitation. “Why are we – ah – making the small conversation?”

“Pardon?”

“The... The small conversation.” Aziraphale’s cheeks glowed faintly pink. “That’s what you call it, isn’t it? This, this idle desultory chitchat thingy that the first-class populace are constantly exercising.”

“Oh, small _talk_. Oh. Er. Er,” Crowley felt heat suffusing his own skin, only his blush rather less delicately just flamed his entire face scarlet. “Well. Er. Usually when people small-talk, usually, it’s because there’s something, er, that they really want to say, and – you know – get out in the open, only neither of them want to say it first, because it could be really awkward and weird for them and sort of completely ruin a friendship that’s taken millennia to establish, if the other person doesn’t agree with what’s been said. Or something like that.” Then, horrified by his careless wording, he found himself babbling further. “I mean, I don’t know, it varies really in different examples, it’s a complicated piece of psychology – mostly not worth bothering with, take it from me. You said you thought we were small-talking? I dunno. Maybe we were. What was it we were talking about? I can’t really recall.”

“The weather,” said Aziraphale mildly. “And the party.”

“Oh.”

The silence this time was full-blown awkward. But why then could Crowley feel the faintest hint of a smile lifting the corner of his mouth, feel himself leaning forward in his anticipation?

“Uh, Crowley?”

Crowley turned again to meet the angel’s gaze, and this time his heart jumped, just a little. Beneath his neat glasses, Aziraphale’s eyes, deep as the ocean, as inherently wise and weary and warm as only an angel’s could be, were alight with a kind of suppressed amusement. 

“Yeah, angel?” Crowley tried to keep his voice steady and casual. Aziraphale looked away, and blessed the railings with the tiniest of smiles.

“That, er, that _was_ small talk then, wasn’t it?”

Crowley stared. Then he startled them both by laughing, and Aziraphale joined him, and all the tension that had been building up was tossed to the wind. What was he doing being fearful of this moment together? This was _Aziraphale_. Everything, for the rest of eternity, was going to be _fine_. It was like letting out a breath, this realising. It was like release.

“Yeah, Aziraphale,” smiled Crowley. “Well done. That was small talk.”

Aziraphale smiled back. Their eyes met. 

“Crowley...”

Crowley braced himself. He knew what was coming. 

“What... What do you suppose... exactly happened back there?”

The demon inhaled, slowly, and quietly.

He didn’t need to ask what the angel meant. _Back there_. What had happened when they’d performed together, when their music had become one perfect harmony. When they’d felt their insides sing with the joy of playing, of union; when they had looked into each other’s eyes and seen their own expressions and emotions mirrored exactly. Crowley knew that some essential part of his relationship with the angel had _changed_ as they played together; had, in fact, been changing throughout the whole voyage. It had been changing since the moment he saw his angel standing there by himself on the docks of Southampton, surrounded by all those tartan suitcases that were so ridiculous but also so _Aziraphale_ , when the last time they’d laid eyes on each other had been almost a century before: the longest time they’d ever been apart since the Arrangement. And then there had been at dinner, which seemed an eternity ago now. Crowley’s mind was momentarily filled with that radiant image of his angel, standing in the middle of the staircase, looking so regal and elegant and solitary, like a great historical hero carved as a woodcut in some ancient Catholic tome. 

Yes, he knew exactly what had happened _back there_. 

Back in the present, on the bow of that handsome ship, rich mellow colours seeping into the grey canvas of the sky by the second, Crowley exhaled a shuddering breath. The words were in his mouth now, waiting to be irrevocably unleashed, and he could almost taste them, _feel_ how they would feel as he spoke them. Oh, Go— _somebody_ , this was going to hurt. Demons weren’t supposed to use words like these in relation to themselves. He had no idea what it would do to him. He didn’t even know if he _could_ do it.

“I think,” he began. His voice was oddly cracked, like a man having held his silence for years. He swallowed, worked some moisture in his mouth, and tried to go on. “I think what just happened was – was –”  

Could he do this? He swallowed again, deliberately this time, huffed out a breath that rose like a spectre in front of their faces before dissipating. “I – I –”

Aziraphale was watching, curious: he didn’t understand the internal battle that was raging within his companion.

“I _think_ –”

“My dear, perhaps –”

“No! No, angel, just... just shut up for a second, would you? I’m almost there, okay, just give me a minute,” he held a hand up exasperatedly at the angel to silence him. “I’m a bloody demon, you know. This kind of stuff doesn’t come naturally to us. Cut me a break here.”

“Right, right, very well...”

“Anyway,” Crowley turned back at the blank ocean to scowl at it. “Right. _Right_. So... er...”

“You think...?” Aziraphale prompted helpfully.

“Right, yeah. What I was trying to say was that I think that... I think that... oh _Hell_... _Bloody Hell_ , this is so bloody hard... Right...”

Aziraphale waited patiently, poised completely still, strung as tightly as his violin.

“I _think_ –”

No, he was wrong. Aziraphale wasn’t patient at all. One moment he was standing there beside the demon, a reassuringly generous foot between them, and the next the angel’s soft heat was all around him, so swift was Aziraphale’s action of turning to take the demon’s wind-chilled face in both his hands; of leaning in to close that foot into an inch.

Crowley stopped trying to talk. He stopped trying to think. His mind came to a standstill, trains of thoughts losing all coordination and crashing into each other, crumpling into unsalvageable heaps of twisted half-finished sentences.

Aziraphale moved his thumbs in circles around Crowley’s cheeks, and light flooded into the demon’s eyes as his sunglasses dissolved.

“Better?” murmured the angel. His words smelled of cassia, though Crowley wasn’t even sure he remembered what cassia smelled like – perhaps it was Eden. The rush of nostalgia was so strong and unfamiliar it was dizzying.

Aziraphale was trembling with suppressed emotion. It took all of his will not to betray his anticipation into his voice as he spoke, calmly and collectedly. “You were saying, my dear?” 

Crowley had forgotten how to breathe.

“Aziraphale,” he whispered. “Azira— _Assssiraphale_...”

Aziraphale’s hands tightened convulsively around the demon.

“I think last night...”

They were so close to each other now. Crowley’s mouth was stinging: demons weren’t supposed to speak of such things, not ever, but still he went on. His eyes were so bright and wide they seemed to glow.

“Last night... Aziraphale, last night I think we fell in love.”

There was a moment, an empty moment of stillness, during which the world seemed to pause to consider this revelation; to tilt its head in wonder. And then, without knowing who moved first, almost without even realising what they were doing, they were leaning in, closing the space between them, and their lips were touching. 

The kiss was light and gentle, the most careful and delicate of touches, the most tentative. Those first few stunned, inconceivable seconds of contact were filled with disbelief, and disburdening, and discovery – and then, most terrifying of all, dangerous, irrepressible hope that sang within them heedless of their complete and utter vulnerability. Neither angel nor demon dared move deeper, to do anything that might break the spell, that might startle the other into pulling back and ending this madness. 

And yet, regardless, it _fit_. It made sense. It was perfect.

Pulses quickened; breaths shortened; muscles contracted. And, completely of its own accord, the kiss evolved.

Aziraphale couldn’t help the soft noise of surprised pleasure that escaped him as it did, his mouth instinctively opening to take a leap of faith and admit that serpentine tongue; Crowley’s own mouth grew warmer still, hungry for more of this divine being somehow impossibly his to kiss. His hand moved of its own accord to the angel’s shoulder to pull him closer; likewise Aziraphale’s own hand found the demon’s waist and tugged until they were clasped against each other, their glorious incorruptible bodies as one. Now, deep within and soaring together, their fears cast to the misty waters below, they kissed like the other was life; they kissed like they were making up for millennia worth of time lost. And, of course, they were. How had they not realised this sooner? How had they possibly been so _blind_?

And now Aziraphale’s hands were twisting through Crowley’s sleek, soft, _soft_ hair, and Crowley’s long versatile tongue was acquainting itself with Aziraphale’s own, tasting the angel’s sweet nectar whilst his fingers traced the delicate tendons around collarbone and drew gasps of pleasure from them both.

When they finally drew themselves apart – when they came back into time, and corporeality – they were smiling from ear to ear, grinning at each other. They were glowing.

Aziraphale ran his tongue around his lips, tasting salt and iron and – odd – something bitter and unfamiliar: almondy. 

“You taste like blood,” he stated, and he relished the taste.

Crowley grinned at him, indeed revealing a mouth that glistened too red: the consequence of his most un-demonic of revelations. With his snakelike eyes and his bloodied mouth and his manic smile, he looked like a wild animal as it peers around for second helpings. “It hurt a little,” he admitted. “Not a mouth made for such words.” He was still smiling as he wiped at the crimson with the back of a hand, then looked at the flash of colour against his white skin. He licked, and he tasted, and the sight of that long agile tongue on pale flesh, the barely perceptible sound that accompanied it, set Aziraphale burning like he hadn’t felt for more than a millennium. 

“My dear,” breathed Aziraphale, aching. “My _dear_.” 

Crowley could feel a hiss rising in his throat like a purr of pleasure. He took Aziraphale by the shoulders and they embraced again, holding each other, breathing them in, promising with silent words to never leave each others’ side from now on, come Heaven, Hell or high water.

Crowley smiled into Aziraphale’s fragrant mass of hair and caressed his shoulder blades, feeling pinions and small delicate bones and metaphysical voids filled with feathers coiled away from the corporeal world. He shut his eyes, and hissed softly with utter contentment.

“My angel,”

And, as they embraced, behind them to the east the new day’s sun had finally broken across the surface of the ocean: a perfect, shimmering, rose-pink orb of radiance that slowly left its twin behind on the glistening waters; that bathed the world in warmth and colour; that finally chased away the restless, hazy, and sleepless night.


	7. The Beginning

It is not an everyday happening, this.

No. That is too much of an understatement.

It would be more accurate to simply state the truth: that in all the six thousand Earthly years after the Great War in Heaven, in all the time there have ever been Fallen angels – an Enemy, an Adversary, an Opposition, and the rest – this has never happened before. Not even close. 

Aziraphale can feel himself falling. Not Falling, though, so that’s okay. He is being pushed, very gently, by one long, pale, ineffably beautiful hand. He is being pushed back into silk, and warmth, and the onset of ecstasy.

The silk is not standard Titanic issue, but they had both unconsciously assumed it would be silk, so silk it is. Aziraphale doesn’t think he has ever felt a cloud in Heaven, a leaf in Eden, a page in his first editions, that is quite this soft, this enveloping.

Aziraphale is, piece by piece, consumed. He is, for the first time in all his existence, the one being worshipped.

~

 

It would be an understatement to say that they have all the time in the world.

They have an eternity.

~

 

“When was the last time you flew, angel?”

This, murmured into Aziraphale’s abdomen, is enough to draw the angel from what he supposes might just have been his first-ever doze. Crowley’s query is warm and vibrating against his skin. The angel manages to open his eyes, and it is like pulling his lashes out of honey. He feels... gosh, he feels _exhausted_.

“Sixteen sixty-six, the Great Fire of London,” he finds it within himself to murmur in response. Then, though he’s not sure why he does, he adds, “I needed to see it for myself.”

Crowley raises a brow. “The fire?”

“No.”

“The pain?”

“Indeed, no.”

“The...” Crowley’s imagination – admittedly completely spent, like every other piece of him – seems to fail him at this point. “...The suffering?”

Aziraphale gives up, and closes his eyes again. “Nor that,” he says, addressing the woody red-gold of his inner eyelids. _Russet_ , the word comes to him. It is beautiful.

There is a loss of pressure around his midriff as Crowley raises his head. “Then why? Why’d you fly?”

It’s even harder to open his eyes this time, but Aziraphale feels he owes him that much. When he finally gets there, Crowley is watching him, all serious and curious and languorous, ankles crossed on the sheets behind him, hair splayed untidily over his forehead, rich eyes heavy-lidded.

“I did it to see the colours,” the angel says simply. Then, softer still, distant and remembering and sleepy, “I did it to see the colours.”

~

 

Slick, dewy skin. The sharp curve of shoulder blade. Crowley’s body is trembling and writhing beneath the angel’s fingertips, a touch as soft and benign as rainfall, as light as feathers. Angelic beings may lack fundamental spiritual gender, but neither actually lacks anything _physical_ ; and yet it seems that God still felt the need to compensate, to give them the gift of _this_. The small of the demon’s back is writhing with it, shuddering in pleasure; had the wings been earthbound they would have been spasmodically extending and contracting, touching the walls one second then curled tight against his body the next. 

It has been said many times before that God works in mysterious ways. Ways which, as Aziraphale’s hands continue to explore what isn’t quite the demon’s shoulder blades, and he himself can’t help but echo his lover’s moan of pleasure, neither of them really have any complaint against. Not really.

~

 

“I think, all things considered, that Lucifer had good reasons, but it’s still inexcusable. I mean, people looked up to him – _you_ looked up to him – even the ones that remained obedient had to admire his courage, indeed as they abhorred him for his heresies. I can only imagine how it must have been for you – alone, days after your chief’s return, scarcely above the lowest ranks among demons, the path through Chaos barely trod – forced to fly to Eden unaccompanied. I suppose they must have been very pleased with you, when news of the Fall of Man reached Pandæmonium. It’s a shame that Milton got it wrong, isn’t it? I know if I was you I'd be awfully annoyed for Satan to get all the credit, and I not even a mention. Oh, don’t give me that look, dear: you _know_ how hard I tried to convince him otherwise. He already had too many characters to go introducing this Crawly fiend, he said. He told me I had no flair for storytelling. How was I to argue? I couldn’t exactly cite my reasoning as historical accuracy now, could I?”

~

 

It shouldn’t have surprised him really, Crowley thinks, when he finally opens his eyes and sees the feathers. He had felt them, felt them unfurl and open wide in a heartbeat, his own as well as the angel’s; had smelled the fresh rainfall in cool woodland, a scent of both earth and sky simultaneously. They came the moment they _came_ , his above erupting towards the ceiling, his below bursting across the sheets to skim the walls – hand in hand, wing in wing, cries hurled together in empyreal, beatific chorus. 

~

 

“You hungry yet?”

“Crowley dear, when are either of us ever hungry, really?”

A pause.

“You want room service yet?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, that sounds like a very good idea.”

~

 

Aziraphale’s eyes are closed, and his hair is matted to his forehead. Crowley is lying on his front, propped up by his elbows, and his wings are arched around them, cocooning them both in a pearl of feather and muscle and dimmed resplendent afternoon light. He is singing, very softly, to the sleeping angel, and what he is singing is this:

 

_Take thou this heart,_

_The heart that loves thee well,_

_And let it flame,_

_Before thy shrine, my own;_

_Take thou my heart,_

_For oh, your dear eyes tell,_

_God fashioned it for you;_

_For you alone._

 

Years from now, one day in the twenty-first century, Crowley will hear this song on Radio Four; will pause to listen; and a flicker of recognition will pass straight through him without so much as stopping to catch its breath. Nonetheless, without knowing why, and putting it down merely to his refined appreciation of turn-of-the-century romantic opera, he’ll play this track over and over, in his Bentley, for days on end, until Enrico Caruso becomes Freddie Mercury.

~

 

“I never knew you in Heaven.”

Crowley pauses in the decidedly erotic act of licking chocolate sauce from his fingertips to look up and snort. “ _Angel._ Are you actually telling me it’s taken you six thousand years to figure that out?”

“Really, my dear.” Hair ruffled fondly. “I was just thinking, how I don’t know your Name. You know, your real name. The name He gave you.”

Crowley goes back to dissecting Aziraphale’s devil’s food cake. “Crawliel, Tempter of God.”

The angel gives a long-suffering sigh, and smiles. “Now do be serious, dear. I want to know your Name. Will you tell me?”

“Sss’not important anymore.” Crowley is all nonchalance now, aimlessly drawing sigils on the bedspread with his chocolate-smeared hands*(8). “It’s not been spoken since the Fall, anyhow. Might burn my tongue off if I say it, who knows. And anyway, if you know my Name you can use it for all kinds of rituals: summoning spells and the like. Who says I trust you enough to give you that kind of power over me, eh?”

* _(8) It might have amused him to know, had he been paying attention, that he what he was writing was “Crowley + Aziraphale forever” in Dæmonic Enochian, encased within a heart._

“I’ll bet it’s beautiful, Crowley,” Aziraphale is watching him, relentless. “I don’t suppose that’s what the ‘J’ stands for in your adopted human title, is it?”

“Nuh. That’s for James, that is.”

“Oh?”

“It’s like my... I don’t know... _concord_ with England. I thought of the most unmistakeably English name I could, and James took the hat.”

Aziraphale, interested, cocks his head. “Why Anthony?”

“I liked the irony.”

“Oh?”

“He’s the patron saint invoked for the return of lost property.”

“Oh.”

“It was that among other reasons, of course. I also kind of fancied it at the time.”

“Right.”

Aziraphale is still watching the demon’s creeping greasy fingers. He is feeling creative. “Dear...” he begins, proposing.

~

 

When Aziraphale wakes again, the sun has gone, and there are darkening shadows on the walls, crisp and acute. Crowley is asleep in his arms. He is snoring, very lightly, and each fluttering exhalation comes out as a hiss.

Aziraphale watches this flickering pink tongue, fascinated. He wants to stay awake – doesn’t want to lose a moment of this – but already his eyelids are falling, the world twirling through the hazy glitter of half-consciousness. The last thought he has before submitting to that comforting darkness is that it doesn’t matter if he sleeps for just a little while. This is only the beginning. And they do have an eternity, after all.

 


	8. The Humours of Ismay

The angel and the demon, perfectly content, sated in just about every way imaginable, were enjoying a rather good feast of delicacies on the bed when there was a sudden knock on the door.

Crowley, leaning on one elbow, looked up from the plate of tiger prawns he’d been perusing. Aziraphale, on his back with a dish on his stomach, paused in the somewhat awkward act of spearing a particularly juicy-looking piece of salted eel on his fork. And the knock, from the door in the living room, came again.

 “Who would that be?” asked the angel, stretching his neck back to scrutinise his lover from upside down.

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut in dismay. “Only one.”

“Mister Crowley? Mister Crowley, are you there?” This pompous, intrusive upper-class voice was accompanied by further bangs on the door. Crowley reluctantly dragged his naked body up and headed out to the living room, disappearing from Aziraphale’s view for a moment before confirming with a quiet groan, “It’s Ismay all right.” 

He ran lithely back into the bedroom, all lithe and glorious and alarmed. Aziraphale, staring in appreciation, rolled over to observe this rather attractive sight from the correct way up. Gosh, he was so pretty when alarmed.

 “Quick, come on, get dressed! I bet you anything he’s got the key, he’s got stewards and all sorts with him.” This said as the demon’s suit lifted itself from where it had been cast on the floor like a shed snakeskin that morning. It shook the creases out of itself as a pair of shiny boots obediently slunk across the floor to prostrate themselves at his feet. “Bloody bastard!” he hissed, pulling on his trousers. He paused momentarily to look at Aziraphale, who was still lying there, still staring. “Get a move on, angel! You want him to find us?”

Aziraphale blinked and came out of the spell. “Oh! Right-o, very well...”

“ _Ssss_ hh! We might still be able to get out a back way. Come on!” Crowley smoothed his hands through his hair, which retained the sleek style as though oiled, as his shirt did up its own buttons. Aziraphale was struggling with his pants*(9).

* _(9) It must be said, though, that most people struggle with their pants around Crowley._

The knocking outside had ceased. There were muffled voices, and an almost pantomime jangling of keys.

Aziraphale was trying to put his head through an armhole.

“Crowley! Crowley, I’m stuck –”

“Miracle it on! Come on!”

Crowley heard the front door opening, heard voices come into full volume, and with a quick glance the bedroom door shut itself over.

“Aziraphale!”

“I’m almost done! Where did I put my waistcoat...?”

Approaching voices, approaching footsteps.

“There’s no time! Just leave it, come on, angel, come on!” Crowley grabbed the dishevelled angel by the arm, dragged him outside onto his private promenade deck and slammed the door behind them, locking it with his eyes just as he heard the bedroom’s open.

Aziraphale was turning in circles on the wood floor. He had forgotten his glasses; without them he looked endearingly defenceless.

“Now what? I thought you said there was a back entrance?”

Crowley briefly gave the deck – which he had barely used – a once over.  “I said there might be another way out of here,” he corrected. He glanced over the elaborate wooden railings at the sea below, then up.

“And is there?”

Crowley half-jogged to the far end of the deck and peered over at the sleek smooth side of the ship, which looked stubbornly sleek and smooth and un-climbable. He looked up. Then he came back to Aziraphale.

“Okay, I’ve got a plan,” he reported cheerfully. “It’s very dangerous and very daring and exceptionally stupid, but it’s the only choice we’ve got, so it’ll have to do.”

“Sounds wonderful,” said Aziraphale warily.

Behind them the door handle was turned, to no effect. 

“Just follow my lead, okay?” Crowley took the angel by the hand and ran with him along to the end of the deck. Here he let go and put a foot on the railings, using a beam to pull the rest of his body up.

“Oh no,” said Aziraphale, backing up. “Oh, most certainly not. Do you know that I’ve not been discorporated for almost four hundred years now? I’d like to keep it that way.”

Crowley bent down in one quick supple movement so that his face was level with and inches from the angel’s. “What choice do we have?” he said, in the reasonable tone of one asking for something perfectly reasonable and not completely insane. “Look, we’re only two storeys below the main deck: all we’ve got to do is put one foot on the ledge of this porthole here –” he indicated to his left with a jerk of his head “– and one hand on the ledge of that porthole there –” a glance above them “– and then we just pull ourselves up, and stand on the ledge of the next porthole, and –” 

“Are you absolutely, completely raving mad, Crowley?”

Crowley smiled, wide and gleaming and, indeed, raving mad. “Nah. I’m just very, very intent on skipping dinner tonight.” He pecked the angel once on the lips, fast as a striking snake, then straightened up so that Aziraphale was left staring at trouser legs and immaculate snakeskin brogues. He heard him say, “Look, don’t worry about me, angel, yeah? I’m spry. I could do this in my sleep.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” muttered Aziraphale, as the first of the demon’s feet disappeared. 

Crowley wasn’t exactly feeling as confident as he sounded. The inset ledges of the portholes were looking an awful lot narrower this close up... and further away from each other, too. He arranged his foot more securely on the railings behind him and, gripping the bottom of the upper porthole with mere fingertips, thrust out his other foot to the ledge closest to him.

He looked down over his shoulder; saw the foamy white spray of the Atlantic whizzing past at twenty-two knots fifteen feet below – violent, wild, hungry – and promptly looked up again. He stared straight ahead into the black bodywork of the ship with eyes huge in their panic. Bloody Hell, this was not good.

He had to keep going. That lock was only going to hold for so long, and Aziraphale was depending on him. Yes. Aziraphale. He had to be brave for Aziraphale.

“Ah, this is dead easy, Aziraphale,” he called over the roar of the water. His fingers were trembling from the cold of the metal – among other reasons. “Nothing to worry about at all.” He carefully lifted one foot to stand on the border that topped the circular window (a border that hadn’t existed a moment ago, but he had just assumed there would be one, and so there was), then the other, until he could straighten up enough to hold the top of the porthole above. 

It should be noted, readers, that no human should ever attempt this. You see, they would fall and die.

Crowley definitely should have fallen and died by now. But he held on. The top of the promenade deck was only a foot or so away from his hands now; if he could just stretch up, grab the pole of the railings and haul himself up...

Aziraphale, wringing his hands and watching every move above him, could hear banging coming from the other side of the locked door as Ismay’s men tried to force it open. Another thump sent a burst of anxiety hurtling through him, and he leaned far over the railings to look up.

“Crowley dear, do hurry!”

A crash from behind him. That was the wood straining against the lock.

Crowley’s flailing hands just missed the railing. “I know, I know! I’m almost there...”

Another crash. That was the panelling buckling.

“ _Crowley, hurry!_ ”

One final crack of shoulder against artfully embellished mahogany and the door burst open in a scattering of splinters. Through it spilled two stewards, their White Star Line caps askew, their cheeks flushed from the exertion, and from behind them, in a suit that cost more than their wages combined, pushed their employer, J. Bruce Ismay, moustache bristling and his expression one of haughty, self-righteous indignation.

The deck was empty.

~

 

Crowley couldn’t breathe, he was laughing so hard. He was doing his best to help Aziraphale onto the deck, honestly. But he just couldn’t stop laughing.

Aziraphale, also incompetent with laughter, finally made it over the railing.

“Crowley, that was... that was...” He had to stop, he couldn’t get the words out for the life of him. “That was _fun!_ ”

Crowley cackled. “Oh, I wish I could’ve seen the look on his face!”

“That was possibly the most ridiculous thing I have done all millennium.”

“It was _insane_ ,” the demon agreed.

Grinning at each other, they leaned against the railings and gratuitously caught their breaths. Around them the first-class passengers stared in scorn at Aziraphale’s untucked shirt, wrongly buttoned up; his unkempt curls; his lack of jacket. At Crowley they just stared.

Which puzzled him for a moment, until he remembered. He snapped his fingers. A pair of shades materialized from out of his eyes.

Aziraphale was hastily doing up his collar.

“You look a state,” Crowley pointed out, in a helpful tone of voice.

Aziraphale blinked. Then he and the demon dissolved into uncontrollable laughter again, laughed until their sides ached and their eyes ran, and old women imperiously averted their eyes from this uncouth public display of emotion.

Eventually, after they had calmed down enough for coherency to resume, Crowley said thoughtfully, “I reckon we need some place decent to hide for a bit, angel. Ismay’s like one of those bloody lock-jaw dogs when he gets an idea in his head. He just won’t let it go. Bugger’ll never stop hunting me.” 

Aziraphale, who was shivering in the chill of the twilight, wrapped his arms around himself. “I quite agree, my dear.” Then, “Preferably may we hide somewhere warm?”

Crowley smiled then, a smile that bore all the self-assured satisfaction that only a mischievous mind hatching a wholly mischievous idea can. 

“You know something? I think I know the perfect place.”

~

 

“I’m quite certain that this is not allowed, you know. And I still fail to see why we couldn’t have just gone back to my suite,” frowned Aziraphale, but not in total disapproval. It certainly was warm in here, at least. Hellishly so.

“I told you,” said Crowley patiently, swinging their held hands as they strolled casually down what could have easily passed for an Outer Circle of Hell. “They’d’ve figured it out eventually, where we were. We’re much safer here, trust me. Not exactly first-class territory, this.”

Around them the stokers shot resentful glares at these two spotlessly clean first-classers. The whites of their eyes were most infernally juxtaposed against their soot-blackened faces, and their shining muscles rippled as they shovelled in endless streams of coal to the ruminating mouths of the boilers. 

Aziraphale turned to smile at the demon, a slow little smile that spread across his features, illuminating them gradually from the inside, and his companion suppressed the sibilant sounds of appreciation that rose to warm his mouth. “As difficult as I find it to feel safe amidst such inherently infernal hostility, I must admit you do have a point, my boy.” He squeezed Crowley’s hand. “And I trust you.”

“No one better than a guardian demon for a trip through Hell, right?” grinned Crowley, squeezing back. His sunglasses momentarily flared brilliant-white as they caught the dazzling blaze of expiring coals. “Not that Hell looks anything like this these days, to be honest. Less burning pits of Eternal Agony and more bureaucracy, if you get me.” He beamed proudly. “It’s really quite nice when your suggestions are actually listened to, for once.”

On they walked, dodging workers and wheelbarrows, swinging shovels, belches of ash and plumes of dust. The boiler rooms were long, narrow, and high-ceilinged, swelteringly warm and obscured by thick dark-red smoke, stretching far beyond the eye’s capability to see through the haze. One might have assumed they continued on forever.

“So, whatever shall we do with ourselves to while away the hours of captivity down here?” mused Crowley, as straight-faced as he was able to, as they rounded a corner and found themselves most invitingly alone down a secluded area behind the rows of boilers. “Gosh, I’m all out of ideas, really.” He nudged his companion. “What do you reckon, angel, hm? Any ideas?”

Aziraphale compressed his lips thoughtfully in a way that set a fascinating and most endearing little dimple in each cheek. And sexy, too. Yes, definitely that last one. Oh hi there, sexy little dimples. “Well, we could always inspire motivation and Purpose within these poor firemen,” the angel supposed, shrugging, and Go— _somebody_ , Aziraphale was bloody sexy when he talked. “Or perhaps sing to them?” Even sexier when he shut up, though, thought Crowley, cocking his head. “They do look as though they could use –”

In one flash he could take it no more and did just that to him, shoving him back against an iron-bolted wall mid-speech and silencing that sexy voice with a long, crushing, and most definitely mind-blowing kiss. Aziraphale’s mouth opened in surprise at the attack, then further in instinctive response as every muscle in his body hardened wonderfully. Crowley’s tongue was flickering so furiously within Aziraphale’s mouth, fast as a hummingbird’s wings. It kick-started its own pulsating rhythm within his bloodstream, reversing the flow, the natural order, all sense of up and down, of Heaven and Earth – Heaven and Hell – and Crowley grinned against that burning mouth as he felt the other being prick up with a gasp of surprised pleasure. 

“Dear, the stokers –” 

“ _Ssss_ o?” hissed Crowley around an earlobe, nibbling and sucking and drawing all kinds of unimaginably arousing little discomposed noises from the angel. “Let ’em look, bet they could use the entertainment.” He coiled a leg around Aziraphale’s own, pressing their bodies together; pressing their fires together. “Just _sss_ hut up and let me _sss_ educe you, angel.”

Aziraphale did, and then it was Crowley’s turn to gasp in surprise as the angel took control and _lunged_ : forwards and inwards, against and around. He raked his hands through the demon’s coal-dusted hair, thrusting back against him in retaliation of the kiss, unleashing his own equally fiery and equally damnable passion on the momentarily unsuspecting Enemy. Their lips collided in a flurry of crushing, frenzied strikes, clashing then parting, dragging unnecessary air in at each heavy half-second apart as their hands teased and traversed and slid beneath buckles into darkened areas of heat and intoxication. Vented steam billowed all around them as they worked, colours of old wine and new suns, silhouetting them against the spectrum of oranges...

And then, quite suddenly, Crowley was alone. Aziraphale had vanished, and Crowley was arched and panting and – most annoyingly – deflating against a bare wall. He drew back in surprise, stared all around him in confusion.

“Aziraphale?” he called, spinning on his heels. His initial thoughts of some kind of joke were rapidly decaying to sour-tasting anxiety on finding the passage behind him also Aziraphale-less.What in the Hell was going on?

“Aziraphale?” he tried again, a little more alarmed this time. His words barely carried five feet through the smoke. 

Something was wrong. Something was different about the room now. Crowley, cautiously treading back towards the boilers, suddenly realised: nobody was looking at him, or paying the slightest bit of attention to him.

Totally sober and serious now, the demon waved a hand in front of the nearest stoker’s face, who was grunting rhythmically to himself as he shovelled. “Hallo?” said Crowley. “Hallo, excuse me?”

No response.

Okay, not good. He spun around, and, much to his relief, saw someone who was staring straight at him.

“Hi,” said the demon to the stoker, approaching him. “You, er, you wouldn’t happen to have seen my friend, would you? He was right with me not a moment... er. Excuse me? Sir?”

The man was not looking at Crowley at all. He was staring at the pocket of air that Crowley was currently occupying. He was staring right through Crowley.

And he appeared to be listening, hard, to something. There was a look of intense concentration – so far as the demon could tell through the dirt – on his scowling face, as though someone was whispering in his ear. Then, suddenly, his face became blank and apathetic. He shrugged his big shoulders, apparently in response to something Crowley most definitely had not been the one to say.

“Aw’ight,” shrugged the man, completely indifferent, staring right through Crowley.

Then he lifted one foot and stepped straight into his boiler.

Crowley spluttered and gasped and made the sort of  incoherent noise that happens when you try to say “What!” and “No!” and “ _Shit!_ ” all at once.  He had taken one involuntary step forward before he even realised what he was doing – but no sooner had he realised this when he involuntarily stopped dead again.

Something was coming _out_ of the boiler, where the man had just stepped in and purged himself. Someone was climbing _out_ of the fire.

It was a man, but a completely different man: a slender and elegant figure, apparently untouched by the flames, unaffected by the incredible heat; a man who wore what appeared to be a fashionably cut, perfectly tailored pinstripe suit; a man who seemed oblivious to its singeing sleeves, to the white-hot coals stuck to the soles of his otherwise immaculate shoes; to the insane temperatures that should have melted that perfect, pretty, well-moisturised face right off. It was a man Crowley had hoped never to see again – someone he had completely forgotten he was told he would be seeing again on this very voyage. He was also not a man: he was a demon.

Asmodeus straightened his tie, and raised his cuffs to his lips to gently blow out the flames. Then he smiled, slowly and languidly and lasciviously; tilted his head to admire the other demon with lust-filled heavy-lidded eyes.

“Hello, Crowley.”


	9. Orders

For the second time that day – surely a record – Crowley blinked. And then, more deliberately, again.

But Asmodeus remained where he stood, perfectly perfect and real. Steam was curling off his suit, and the blazing scarlet of his eyes was dimming back to its regular burgundy.

Crowley found his voice. 

“Suicides,” he said flatly, his voice not quite raw, but close. “That’s how you do it. You move through suicides.”

Asmodeus smiled again, so tenderly and lovingly. “That’s right,” he said, then rolled his shoulders in an elegant shrug. “It’s a lot quicker than flying... and _so_ much more enjoyable.”

Crowley was still dumbstruck. He could barely believe it, even after seeing it with his own eyes. It was sickeningly ingenious. Get people to kill themselves, then climb across their descending souls as they pass from Earth to Hell. It was almost the sort of thing a human would think up. Eventually he thought of something to say to this. 

“Nice idea.”

“Why thank you, Crowley,” smiled Asmodeus, most likely plagiarising the work of some other demon. “Poison’s the best way to go about it, though. So neat. Jumpers are ever so messy, and fire... Well,” he indicated his smouldering ankle, which ceased immediately. “It’s far from ideal. But it’s fast. And I needed to see _you_ again, Crowley, as soon as possible.”

Crowley’s heart was pounding harder with every beat. “Oh?” he swallowed. Tried to keep casual. “How come?”

The Archdemon craned his neck to see around the other demon; see the oblivious workers, and their machines, and their fires.

“It’s much too loud in here,” he said in distaste. Then his eyes flicked back to Crowley, and he smiled, shortly and slyly, at him, as though struck by some horrid idea. “I know.”

And then, effortlessly, he raised a hand, until the palm was parallel with his body; as though he was calling for silence, perhaps. 

The stokers dropped like flies to the floor. Every furnace door slammed shut. The intrusive whistle of steam died down.

Asmodeus surveyed the now much darker and much quieter room with a self-satisfied smirk.

“Mm. That’s better.”

Crowley stared at one of the stokers behind the other demon. The man’s eyes were wide open – unnaturally wide – but curiously unfocused, as though he was not seeing _here_ , the boiler room, but elsewhere. He twitched and jerked, but made no sound. He was trapped in a nightmare.

“Now,” said Asmodeus, beginning.

Crowley raised his eyebrows in expectation, trying to look interested and not horrified.

“The Council of Darkness has reached their decision. And they have some exceptionally specific orders for you. Of the _utmost_ importance.”

Asmodeus came towards him now, taking each footstep slowly, unhurriedly: making him wait. His every movement emanated pleasure and satisfaction, both of the sinful kind.

“You’ll just love this. It’s so _ambitious_.”

They were face to face now, mere inches between them. He smelled of sulphur and cinders, and something unquestionably unhealthy but seductive,  intriguing – the way glue or petroleum tempts its inhalers to linger and breathe just that little bit deeper. Asmodeus leaned even closer, eyes pausing for a moment on Crowley’s lips, drawing out the suspense for those few tense moments further. Yet more seconds passed before he spoke softly into Crowley’s ear. The words were hot against his skin and filled with wicked delight as he uttered that final, fateful verdict. 

“ _Sink the Titanic_.”

Crowley felt himself go cold. “What?” he said.

“ _Sink_ her,” repeated Asmodeus, luxuriating at the words the way a wine connoisseur swills a vintage to admire its colour. “Banish her to the deepest abyss. Lead her by the neck to her slaughter _. Dye the Atlantic red with her blood_. Use your imagination.”

“But... But...” Crowley stumbled for coherency in his panic and horror. “But she’s unsinkable! She’s the most unsinkable ship to ever not be sunk!”

Asmodeus regarded him with patronising fondness. “ _Crowley_. So modest all of a sudden. As I recall in your report, that Thomas Andrews called it ‘ _practically_ unsinkable’; and _you_ neglected to inform the media of that rather crucial little adjective. Very clever of you.”

“But she’s a den of iniquity!” said Crowley desperately, grabbing at straws now. “It’s all... all unparalleled luxury and all-you-can-smoke after-parties and... and feeding your gluttony and greed and covetousness. _And_ lust,” he added, for good measure, remembering the Archdemon’s speciality. “And then, _then_ , there’s all the inequality, with first class and –” 

“Again with the modesty, Crowley. It’s most unlike you.” Asmodeus gently cut through him as though dismissing the reasoning of a child. “Isn’t most of the civilised world now capital-ruled and driven by self-interest? Your efforts have not gone unnoticed these past few centuries.”

“But sinking her will unite the Western world in their tragedy!” Crowley tried again desperately. “They’ll set aside their differences and light Candles of Forgiveness and –”

Asmodeus, who had been theatrically mock-sighing, now cut him off again. “When Adam and Eve first mourned the taste of your accursèd apple, sweet Serpent, did you witness a unity, a consolidation?”

Crowley, startled by this change to a subject so long unthought-of, was momentarily caught off guard.

“Of course not,” the Archdemon answered for him smoothly. “Instead of accepting their sins and transgression, they cast blame unto each other. You remember? And then they _bickered_ amongst themselves, in that delightfully crude tongue of theirs: Man’s first argument,” he smirked to himself, no doubt recalling with pleasure the images the demons of Pandæmonium had drawn from Crowley’s mind upon return from this sorrowful scene. “Oh, yes,” Asmodeus continued, nodding to himself. “Yes, Titanic shall bring forth such woe unto the hearts of Men.” He was now looking at Crowley directly, eyes turned dark by this talk of essential demonic business, and under the full force of his gaze – no longer diluted by tender condescension, or less-than tender desire – Crowley was suddenly and acutely aware of just exactly what their differences in rank signified; of the power this great demon held, momentarily unemployed; of what he could do if he chose to exercise it. 

“The ship they say God himself cannot sink shall be sunk in the name of Satan Our Master,” said Asmodeus, with terrible finality. “Man shall rue their optimism, their hope... their _faith_ ,” he hissed the word in disgust, as though it offended him to utter it. “They shall question what kind of a God allows His people to be so randomly massacred. They shall raise their flags on this night for a century to come –”

“Wait, _this_ night?” interrupted Crowley, unable to contain himself. “You mean, on this voyage, the maiden voyage?”

“ _Yes,_ Crowley, when else?” said Asmodeus, with a touch of impatience.  The infernal fires in his eyes had died back at being cut off mid-flow, and he sighed in annoyance. “Look, just get it done, yes? This is kind of a big deal. Lucifer himself has expressed an interest in the scheme, though he’s leaving it under the command of Beëlzebub for now.” Name-dropping. Letting Crowley know just how high this went, the type of consequences there would be at failure. “I know we can all rely on you, Crowley,” said Asmodeus, the warmth now restored in his voice. “I know that you, of all demons, will understand the importance of this.”

Crowley stared.

“I know, Crowley,” continued the fiend, so soft and alluring and superficially lovely, “that you will get this done.”

~

 

Aziraphale awoke to something prodding him, hard, in his soft abdomen. With a groan he opened his eyes a crack.

Then promptly shot upright.

“Y’orwight, mista?”

Aziraphale jumped again and found himself before the ruddy face of a stoker barely inches from his own.

“Am I... Am I what?” he asked in total confusion, rubbing the back of his disturbingly aching head. He looked around him, then down. Gosh. He was covered in soot.

“’E said are you aw’ight,” translated another fellow, his Cockney accent so thick he too was barely understandable.

Aziraphale stared. 

“Er,” he said, eloquently.

“I fink ’e ’it ’is ’ead.”

“Fink you’re right.”

Aziraphale pulled himself to his feet, miracling away the head rush.

“I’m terribly sorry to dash off so soon,” he said politely, bringing his hands elegantly together. “But have either of you fine fellows seen my friend around here?”

The stokers stared.

“Tinted glasses? Dark hair? Good cheekbones?”

Two heads shook in unison.

Aziraphale frowned. “Right.”

How odd, he thought, as the stokers left him be. Most definitely alarming indeed.

He searched the boiler room. And the next. He stopped searching once he realised how gigantic those rooms actually were.

Wherever could that blessed demon have got to? 

Perhaps, having lost him, Crowley had gone back to his suite? Yes. Yes, of course, that would be it. Aziraphale nodded to himself, starting up a ladder he hoped would lead back to somewhere he recognised.

Perhaps it was a game? he thought, on finding the suite empty. That was the sort of tomfoolery the demon tended to play at, wasn’t it?

Aziraphale sat forlornly on his absentee lover’s bed.

No. No, that wasn’t it, either.

Ismay had left a message. With a sigh he picked it up and skim-read its none-too-pleased content whilst chewing cold and rather slimy eel.

Perhaps Hell –

Then every lamp in the room went out.

Aziraphale yelped in alarm and jumped to his feet, standing in a plate of what felt like the remains of the devilled oysters. Immediately a shaft of electric blue light fell down from the ceiling and illuminated him in a brilliant ethereal spotlight.

“Good God!” he exclaimed in shock, raising an arm to shield himself from that blinding brightness.

“Not quite,” said a disembodied voice from above.

Aziraphale, one foot still uncomfortably in sushi, froze.

The voice was one that hinted simultaneously of both immense beauty and immense power, a voice whose soft musical lilt contradicted the strength with which its words were delivered; the mocking dryness they were layered with. It was the voice of a great leader, a voice that drew respect – _reverence_ – without question.

That voice... That light...

Oh, dear.

“Greetings, Aziraphale,” said the cool voice of the Metatron, the Voice of God.

“Gosh, has it really been –”

“Five thousand, nine hundred and sixteen years, yes,” said the great seraph, brushing aside the small talk with impatience. “Aziraphale, I am afraid this is not a social visit. There is a matter that has been brought to our attention, on which we require further information immediately.”

Aziraphale swallowed, and hoped his discomfort wasn’t readable on his face. “Oh, yes?” he said to the light.

“Claims by a source have recently fortified suspicions of ours that regard you, Aziraphale, and a particular demon whom you have been acquainted with since the birth of humanity. A demon that has been referred to by some as your ‘infernal counterpart’; your ‘Equal and Opposite’; the...” There was a pause, as though the Metatron was shuffling through some notes, “... ‘Yang to your Yin’...”

Aziraphale couldn’t help it – he let out a short, quiet laugh.

“You find this amusing, do you, Aziraphale?” said the Metatron sharply.

“Oh, no! No of course not,” Aziraphale fought to bring himself under control. “It’s merely the philosophical Chinese euphemism that threw me, Your Resplendence.”

The seraph went on as though uninterrupted. “The demon’s name is Crowley,” he said. There was a terrible pause. “And we have been informed that he is your friend.”

Aziraphale caught his breath. Any humour left in his body took flight on swift wings. This was it. It had been inevitable, really. They were bound to figure it out eventually.

The harsh blue light was intensifying at his silence. Light travels in straight lines, but here the Metatron’s seemed to be curving, coiling insidiously around its subject like creeping incorporeal vines. A gasp caught in Aziraphale’s throat as the binds tightened ever so slightly; pushed phantom feathers against the back of his head; constricted around soft waistline. Not enough to hurt – only to _notice_.

The Metatron’s voice came as cold and pitiless as ever.

“Do you deny this, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale couldn’t lie. Not under the gaze of the greatest of the four seraphim. It would be lying to God. He took a deep breath, as best he could with so restricted a ribcage. All around him the light-binds held him trapped in place but now he held no fear. For, when the truth was all you had to give – all you loved and believed in – how could you fear it?

And so he looked proudly into the light, and when he spoke, his voice betrayed not a quiver. He stared straight up into Heaven, bold and resolute and incorruptible. “No, Your Resplendence,” he told the Metatron – told God. “I do not.”

~

 

There was no way he was sinking the Titanic.

Crowley’s feet were moving, but he was only vaguely aware of this.

There was no _way_ he was sinking the Titanic.

His footsteps sounded loud on the polished wooden deck.

Sink the Titanic! Sink her! Why now? Why _this ship?_ Out of every ship!

_Sink her._

How could he sink her? He’d spent a whole two years watching her be slowly willed into reality, channelled from blueprinted dreams into solid iron and woodwork. He _loved_ the Titanic. She was the one material possession that he cherished above all others. He knew her inside out – he’d even influenced her design – and he’d put some bloody hard work into making her as luxurious and self-indulging and hedonistic as possible. And he’d succeeded. He hadn’t been exaggerating to Asmodeus when he’d cited her many iniquities. Titanic was a modern masterpiece of pure, delicious sin, and whilst Crowley hadn’t quite been expecting a commendation for his efforts – he’d more been investing for his own enjoyment – the last thing he’d been prepared for was _this_.

_Sink the Titanic?_

Well, he just wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He’d sink a fleet of smaller ones – a bloody _armada_ if he had to – and maybe be more diligent with his damning of souls in future if that was what it took to save her. That would work, right? That would keep Hell happy?

Wrong, thought Crowley miserably. There was something heavy settling on his heart, dragging him down. As though all the gold of the day’s joy and buoyancy had reverse-alchemised into a lead balloon. 

Despair. 

Because Hell would never accept that. Hell would sink Titanic itself just to mock his attachment, and spite him. Hell offered no choice. He was a demon. There was no getting out of this one. It was sink or be sunk. There was no ‘swim’ option to be had – and if there was, then it was swimming in temperatures a degree over freezing as the ship disappeared into the abyss.

Sink the Titanic. 

Crowley’s feet pulled him on. He had no idea where he was going. A small part of his mind was aware that Aziraphale must be worried sick about him. And a small part of him was worried sick about Aziraphale in turn.

But he had a ship to sink. He had to sink the Titanic.

Sink the Titanic.

Hell offered no choice. He was a demon. There was no getting out of this one.

He had no choice.

Crowley’s hands met cool railings. His body met cool metal that curved around his body. His mind met only cool numbness; hopelessness. He leaned far over, breathed in; let the fresh salt sting his nostrils.

He was a demon. There was no getting out of this one.

He had to sink the Titanic.

~

 

Aziraphale’s search, by default, eventually brought him to the bow of the ship. It was dark tonight, the black sky moonless, heavy and oppressive. 

He had to find Crowley. He had to tell him. He had to _warn_ him.

There was a figure right up there at the nose, silhouetted against inky stillness of the sea: someone slender, with dark hair.

That was all Aziraphale needed.

“Crowley!” he called, starting into a jog. “Crowley!”

He was only metres from the demon now – for it was him, he was certain – but Crowley still had not turned to greet him.

“Crowley –”

Aziraphale stopped short as the demon’s side profile came into view, and caught his breath. 

Crowley was stood perfectly still, gripping the railings so hard his knuckles were white and trembling. His skin was wan and grey, and he was gritting his teeth with concentration.

But the most alarming part of all was his eyes: from behind his sunglasses there came a terrible and completely ungodly crimson glow, illuminating his grave face blood-red.

Aziraphale felt himself lose his colour.

“Crowley, what are you doing?”

Crowley’s head moved slightly – convulsively – as though he was trying to look at the angel but was unable to.

“’Zira—phale,” he panted, through clenched teeth. “Go – don’t need to – see this.”

“Crowley, what’s going on?” Aziraphale was frightened. “Crowley, what are you _doing_?”

Crowley let out a terrible moan that was somewhere between a gasp of pain and a sob of frustration.

“I _can’t!_ ” he cried, filled with such despair that Aziraphale felt it as a physical tug at his own heart. “Please! I have to!”

“ _Have to what_?” 

Crowley jerkily shook his head, and gasped again. “No – I have to – have to –”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaimed in alarm, half-reaching out to touch him before pulling back as biospatial static shot up his fingers. “Crowley –”

“ _I have to sink it!_ ”

Aziraphale froze.

Crowley was panting now, air rasping through his teeth. His eyes were like the mouths of Hell. “I have – to sink – Titanic,” he repeated, seeming to push all the energy he had into those words. He moaned in misery. “I – have to. Hell – demon – orders – ship...”

Silence descended. Cold, biting wind whipped their hair about their faces. 

Aziraphale still hadn’t moved. Then, without caring about the consequences, he reached out and took Crowley’s face in his hands. He almost recoiled at the acute prickling that shot across his skin, worse than nettle stings, but held fast. Forced himself to hold those blazing crimson eyes with his own.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, calmly enough, panic only hastily concealed below the surface. “Crowley – please – let go. You have to let me help you. Just... let go.”

There was one long moment filled with only the rush of the roaring ocean below, when the angel and the demon stared into each other’s eyes. Then, giving up and letting go with one great sigh of anguish and shame, Crowley slowly came back. His face relaxed; the fearsome fire behind his eyes began to dim; Aziraphale felt the stinging in his hands lose its edge. 

Barely breathing, he slowly brought his hands down to the demon’s own, still wrapped tightly around the railings. He gently prised the fingers away, one by one, until Crowley stood with his hands by his side, his head bowed. He was trembling all over from his exertions.

Aziraphale let out a shaky breath. “My dear,” he whispered. It wasn’t quite a question, but there was an imploring note to it, inquiring.

Crowley laid his head on the angel’s shoulder.

“I have to do it, angel,” he mumbled, and Aziraphale could feel him convulsing in his chest, spasms of fear and despair; a sob without tears. “I don’t have a choice. ’M a demon. I have to do it.”

 Aziraphale wrapped his arms around him, wordlessly soothed him.

“But I can’t do it,” Crowley sounded terrified and triumphant at the same time. “It doesn’t matter how hard I summon it, I’m just unconsciously repelling it as I do. I can’t make it come.” 

He’d been trying to summon an iceberg, Aziraphale realised. The immediate instinctive horror he had felt at Crowley’s words was replaced by a sudden surge of empathetic pity, understanding only too well the cause of his suffering. Of being a foot soldier, of following orders. Of hating yourself for it.

“I don’t know what to do, Aziraphale,” Crowley was saying from against his shoulder. “I love this bloody ship. I’m damned if I do – damned if I don’t. Damned already anyway.”

Aziraphale tightened his hold and squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could somehow squeeze out Crowley’s troubles. Then he froze.

“Or maybe not.” An idea was unfurling in his mind.

“Huh?” 

Aziraphale drew back from their embrace and felt excitement growing within him. “Well, I’m an angel, aren’t I?”

Crowley gave him a blank impatient stare. Aziraphale went on quickly.

“ _Well_ , I’m the Enemy. The Opposition. It’s my job to thwart your infernal wiles and orders.”

Crowley stared at him blankly.

“So why not let us simply pretend I’ve thwarted your sink-the-Titanic plot? Explain to your superiors that there was an angel on board and you were powerless to stop him – say you did everything you could. I’m sure there shall still be retributions to be had, of course, but far less severe. And Titanic will sail another day.”

Crowley smiled, slowly and sadly. “’S not that simple,” he shrugged listlessly. “But it’s not a bad idea. Guess it could buy us time.” 

Aziraphale gave him a tremulous little smile. He wanted to tell him that it was going to be all right – that _they_ were going to be alright – but he knew already that they wouldn’t be. There could be no happy ending for them. He thought of what he had been going to tell Crowley – what the Metatron had told him must come to pass – but right now, with the demon in such uncharacteristic despair, he couldn’t do it. His own news would make the sinking of the Titanic seem, to them, like the sinking of a toy boat on St. James’s duck pond.

One problem at a time, thought Aziraphale desperately, pulling his lover in closer, and feeling himself be pulled in closer in turn. Perhaps we can fix this. All great truths begin as blasphemies, after all.

He supposed it would help if he could have faith in his own words.

Regardless. For now, whatever lay ahead in their hazy future, they could just hold each other on the night of the fourteenth of April, 1912, and pretend they were free; pretend that this could last; pretend that they were any other pair of lovers embracing together under a starry sky. Who knew how much time they had left for this? Who knew if, once they were separated – and they would be, of that there was no question – they would ever be allowed to see each other again? In any case, there was still a good week left of the voyage: surely they could come up with a plan in that time. And at least there _was_ time. It wasn’t like this was the last night they would ever be together, or anything.

Crowley, holding so tight and being held so tight, opened his eyes to the star-strewn Heavens, and couldn’t stop the sigh from escaping him.

Then his mouth fell open in horror.

Directly in his line of vision was the top of the Crow’s Nest, where he’d sensed the presence of two half-frozen young men stationed on look-out as he’d gone past earlier. He’d heard them talking about him, as he’d blindly walked by, numb with purpose. But now the two figures had become three.

Demons can see in the dark, and they can see far. And Crowley could see that Asmodeus was stood inches from one of the men, and he was whispering in his ear.

Then he felt Aziraphale stiffen in his embrace as he noticed something over Crowley’s shoulder; something that Crowley couldn’t see. Something in the ocean. He pulled back, and turned around.

The iceberg was gargantuan: angular, razor-sharp, terrifying. It was at least three times the width of the ship, if not more, and easily fifty feet high. It was one bright shape in the otherwise darkness of the night. It was coming straight for them.

Crowley looked back over his shoulder at the look-outs. They were staring into space: Asmodeus had them bewitched. They hadn’t seen it. They wouldn’t see it.

He turned again; met Aziraphale’s wide, petrified eyes. They stared one to another, for one second that stretched on forever.

Then they turned, and they ran.


	10. Hard to Starboard

Crowley and Aziraphale spun around and sprinted as fast as they could towards the Bridge, ran so fast the icy April air tore at their faces and clawed its freezing fingers through their clothes, and their heavy footfalls slapped hard on the polished wood of the deck. They ran and they ran, and when they were close enough to notice the solitary figure of First Officer William Murdoch, on duty on the Bridge, they cried together frantically:

“Iceberg! There’s an iceberg!”

“Right ahead!”

“There’s a bloody iceberg!”

“Iceberg, man! ICEBERG!”

And William Murdoch looked up again, and his inferior human eyes adjusted, and then he too saw that ghostly pale shape in the gloom, on the line between the sea and the sky, that terrible motionless spectre of death, right in their path. His mouth dropped open in horror; the colour left his face; he was running towards the Bridge before his body needed to be told to. Crowley, faster than his counterpart, reached it first, in time with Murdoch, and – shoving past the young Sixth Officer, James Moody – he shouted urgently to the helm at the wheel:

“ _Iceberg!_ _Turn!_ ” 

Then, on the same breath as he remembered the terminology, in time with Murdoch, “ _Hard to starboard_!”

“Hard to starboard!” echoed Moody, but Crowley had already pushed past and shoved the helmsman off the wheel, turning it himself, faster than any human could, both hands grabbing and pulling it around as hard as he was able to. No one stopped him. The redundant helmsman had stepped back and was staring in terror at the incoming iceberg, now clearly visible.

“Turn! Turn! Smartly!” shouted Murdoch as he raced past them and set to work signalling to the engine room to stop, swinging the golden levers of the engine telegraph mechanism forth then back to _full speed astern_. And Aziraphale, every fibre of his angelic being desperate to help, did the same for the port side of the cabin. It swung with a musical, incongruous ring, like a bicycle bell.

Crowley’s wheel was as hard over as it could go.

“Helm’s hard over, sir!” called Moody to his superior, who ran past him out onto the Bridge again. Aziraphale was rooted to the spot in the middle of the cabin, unable to move, staring at the swiftly approaching iceberg – still directly in their path.  There were two rings from the machinery: the engineers’ returning signal. They had received the message. There was nothing more they could do up here on the surface.

Precious seconds ticked by, but still – it seemed, to those suspended on the Bridge – the Titanic streamed onwards as fast as ever, straight towards her very doom.

“We’re not turning!” Aziraphale, wide-eyed and ashen-faced, voiced everyone’s thoughts.

Crowley’s hands were gripping the wheel so tightly that they were white. His face was wan with terror. _Because I insisted on the smaller rudder_ , he thought. _Because of me._ There was a horrible sound, like a snake being strangled, and he realised that it was coming from him.

And still the ship sailed straight ahead, unwavering. Both Titanic and the titan held their ground, as though caught in a stand-off. Neither seemed willing to move.

“Is it hard over?!” cried Murdoch from the Bridge. 

“It is, yes sir, hard over!” called Moody.

Aziraphale turned around to face Crowley. The demon was still grasping the wheel firmly, and for a moment, even through his glinting sunglasses, their eyes met. Aziraphale saw right inside Crowley: saw his despair, his defeat, his overwhelming guilt. His consuming self-condemnation. And the angel felt such anger boiling within him at the sight, for how _dare_ anyone – any demon or seraph, any Devil or God – cause such woe to his love? How dare they cast this responsibility on him, on them both? First Heaven and now Hell – pulling them apart.

He would not let them!

And so he spun back again on his heels, focused as hard as he could on that evil, monstrous berg, and _pushed_. He held his arms out in front of him, palms up, and shoved against the air as hard as he could. He leant right into it, so far forward that any human would have fallen over, and pushed the particles of the air together and away, hard enough so that he could feel them collide with the berg as they reached it. He only hoped it would be enough to repel it away from them.

It was. She shouldn’t have been able to turn at all so soon, but, achingly slowly, the great ship was indeed on the move. She was moving to the left. She could make it. 

Aziraphale couldn’t breathe. He pushed harder than ever. And Crowley behind him held on tighter than ever.

She could make it...

There wasn’t a sound in the cabin. Still the ship swung over... but still not fast enough. The iceberg was dominating the skyline now, so close, so awful: jagged and savage and murderous, utterly merciless. Aziraphale felt nausea rise inside his earthly body as the horrible physics played out: as he realised. 

She couldn’t make it. She wouldn’t make it.

And then a silhouetted figure standing at the nose of the ship ran towards them. His panicked shouts carried through the silent cabin, and with them carried their fate: 

“ _It’s gonna hit!_ ”

Aziraphale drew in a convulsive breath as he heard Crowley do the same. 

Then there was a monstrous screech, like the wails of the all harpies of Hell; worse than a thousand nails on chalkboard; a cacophony of screams. Titanic was screaming. The ground beneath their feet trembled, vibrating up their bodies: Murdoch’s hands on the railing shook; Aziraphale grabbed one of the golden levers to steady himself; the wheel beneath Crowley’s unrelenting grip quaked. All across the ship the great wound was felt, as steerage passengers’ rooms were shaken, and blocks of ice broke off and scattered across the decks, and doors quivered on their hinges. Captain Smith was jerked awake; Thomas Andrews, perusing his latest notes over a quiet brandy, looked up in alarm at his trembling chandelier.

It sounded like Titanic was being ripped in two.

“ _Deo et patris_...” whispered Aziraphale, wide-eyed.

Murdoch spun around and shouted, “Hard to _port_!”

“Hard to port!” yelled Moody to Crowley, who was already turning. Murdoch whirled back around to stare in open-mouthed terror as the berg continued to tear its way past.

“The doors!” said Crowley suddenly, as his hands continued to rotate the wheel. Aziraphale spun around so fast his curls whipped him across the forehead. “The doors!” repeated the demon. He was deathly pale; the contrast between his skin and his hair was total. “The watertight doors! Close them, quick!”

The watertight doors were Thomas Andrews’ idea: every compartment in the lowest reach of the hull could be sealed off in the event of a breach, to prevent further flooding. In theory it was foolproof. In reality...

Behind Crowley there was a white panel with a row of unlit light-bulbs proclaiming to illuminate in the case of the doors being shut. Aziraphale ran over and stared at all the various levers and buttons in front of him, looked at them all in rushed indecisive confusion.

“To your left, to your left!” shouted Crowley in agitation. He jerked his head at a switch nearby; his sleek hair was flicked across his face in the action. “That one there! Turn it!”

Aziraphale saw the one and took it in his hands. All he had to do was turn it, and then the one above it, and all the doors in the boiler rooms would close... But what about the men down there? Would they all get out in time?

“ _Aziraphale!_ ” shrieked Crowley. “There’s no bloody time! Never mind the stokers, they can take care of themselves! Get them down _now!_ ”

Aziraphale jumped, then gasped to the Heavens, “Forgive me!” and turned both switches, just as Murdoch ran in intending to do the same. Aziraphale stared in horror as one by one the little light-bulbs lit up. He wondered how many men would make it out alive; how many would drown down there if there was a breach, or be trapped if there wasn’t.

There was silence now, and stillness, emptiness so profound a single movement might have triggered implosion of the world. Horror, unfathomably deep, cutting into every soul in the room, and many outside of it. They couldn’t breathe. They couldn’t move. 

Murdoch’s face was as pale as Crowley’s, and slick with sweat. He didn’t seem to notice the angel and demon in his midst as he ordered, expressionlessly, with a voice that quivered, “Note the time... and enter it in the log.”

“Yes sir,” Moody was gone in an instant.

Crowley had finally let go of the wheel. He wasn’t trembling, like Aziraphale: he was stood completely still, in shock. It didn’t enter Aziraphale’s mind to comfort him: they were all equally in need of comfort. Each man in the room stood there by themselves, solitary figures frozen in their own circles, dread beyond the word’s capability to convey.

Then the door behind them banged open and Captain Smith appeared, tie undone, waistcoat unbuttoned, but with eyes that blazed with indisputable authority. The old seaman glared around the room, taking stock of the two passengers now stood redundant, before saying sharply to his first officer:

“What was that, Mr Murdoch?”

Murdoch had to swallow to regain his composure before answering. “An iceberg, sir.” His hands and voice were shaking. “I put her hard to starboard and manned the engines full astern, but it was too close. I tried to port around it, but she hit, and –”

“Close the watertight doors!” Smith strode out onto the Bridge.

“The doors are closed, sir!” Murdoch hurried after him.

Crowley and Aziraphale, left alone together, still hadn’t moved. After a few moments of splintered silence, they eventually met each others’ eyes.

Crowley’s throat worked as he swallowed, and then he summed up

just about everyone’s feelings in one barely whispered word.

“ _Fuck_.”

~

 

It had been ten minutes since the collision. Ten minutes of waking up important people who really did not want to be woken; of making tea and then not drinking it; of waiting around for Thomas Andrews and the carpenter, John Hutchinson, to return from their assessment. 

Finally Andrews, flanked by the captain and the carpenter, with a bathrobe and fluffy slipper-attired Ismay in tow, swept into the chartroom. Smith, Murdoch, Henry Wilde the Chief Officer, and the two strangers that nobody had yet thought to dismiss parted to let them through. 

“This is most unfortunate, Captain!” Ismay was saying agitatedly. Several people in the room, the strangers included, had to resist the urge to give the fool a good thumping.

Andrews was unrolling one of his blueprints. His face was flushed and damp with sweat, his expression deeply distressed. He spread the large blueprint across the desk: an impeccably neat sketch of the bare bones of the ship, white pencilled lines ordered across deep blue. One of the unfamiliar men – the blonde and no doubt limp-wristed one – swiftly moved to his side to pin one curling end down with a hand; Andrews’ appreciation was conveyed by the smallest of nods in acknowledgement.

“Water, fourteen feet above the keel in ten minutes,” he began, gesturing at the corresponding sections of the diagram as he spoke. “In the fore peak; in all three holds; and in boiler room six.”

“That’s right, sir,” confirmed the wide-eyed carpenter.

“When can we get underway, damn it!” barked Ismay impatiently from behind them.

“That’s five compartments!” Andrews exclaimed, exchanging a grave and meaningful look with captain, willing him to make the connection even if his co-designer could not. Ismay, oblivious, resumed his restless pacing as Andrews continued, “She can stay afloat with the first four compartments breached, but not five.” He stared hard at the captain, then stressed again, “ _Not five_.”

At those words, the room became very, very still. 

Andrews addressed the blueprint again, running his hand along it for demonstration. He tried to speak briskly and professionally, but was powerless to stop the emotion jarring his voice. “As she goes down by the head, the water will spill over the tops of the bulkheads – at E Deck, from one to the next, back and back – there’s no stopping it.”

Captain Smith touched the map. “The pumps: if we open the doors –”

“The pumps buy you time, but minutes only!” Andrews was shaking his head. His eyes settled back on the skeleton drawing of Titanic, his beloved masterpiece, and when he next spoke his words carried all the weight of the crisis on their shoulders. “From this moment on, no matter what we do... Titanic _will_ founder.”

There was a terrible, heavy silence, a silence that tore and then burned at the rawness it exposed. This was real, they all realised. This ship – the unsinkable Titanic, the ship of dreams – was doomed.

“But this ship can’t sink!” Ismay, incredulous, burst out, as though the very suggestion was preposterous.

A furious hissing erupted from the other stranger, the wannabe-Mafia trainee in sunglasses. Andrews seconded the man by rounding on his co-designer, and for all present it was their first time seeing the man in anger.

“She’s made of iron, sir – I assure you, she can!” he snapped. Ismay froze where he stood. “And she will. ’Tis a mathematical certainty.”

The silence this time was profound, and lasting. Moments passed.

“How much time?” the old captain’s voice was steady and calm.

Andrews perused his blueprint, did the sum in his head. Then he paused, and his eyes filled with terrible sorrow. Like defeat. His voice was gentle as he spoke. “An hour. Two, at most.”

The two strangers had forgotten to breathe, and it sounded as though they were not the only ones. All around the room, and behind them in the corridor where at least half a dozen officers had gathered to listen, there was not one sound.

Then Captain Smith voiced the question that no one else dared to.

“And how many aboard, Mr Murdoch?”

Murdoch, face glistening, had to swallow before he was fit to answer. He looked close to tears. “Two thousand, two hundred souls, sir.”

Smith turned slowly around. His whiskered, creased face was cold and dark as he addressed his employer; bowed his head in an icy parody of regards. “Then I believe you may get your headlines, Mr Ismay.”

Further silence ensued as everyone’s eyes flicked to the unabashed Managing Director, realising: it was _him_ who had ordered more speed! If not for him, the ice warnings would have been taken more seriously; the speed would have been checked; the berg sighted on time... Then all of a sudden, just as Smith had opened his mouth to speak again with no doubt harsh, damning words, the blonde gentleman stepped forward, holding his palms up. Every pair of eyes turned to look at him. The man’s startlingly blue eyes blinked ingenuously behind their delicate little glasses and, for some inexplicable reason, halted all thoughts of condemnation.

“My dear fellows, we haven’t the time to cast blame tonight,” he said calmly, speaking quickly and unselfconsciously. His impeccably enunciated voice, as English as his appearance, was as lovely as honey. The strange gentleman went on, bringing his hands peaceably together. “Mr Andrews here says we have but an hour; I would suggest we all get to work and ensure that as many people as possible get off this boat and to safety before it is too late. Would you not all agree?”

All around the room, deep, calming breaths were drawn in. 

Apparently unaffected, Smith looked at the bespeckled fellow sternly, this outspoken stranger setting him in his place, but was unable to summon a valid argument. He nodded shortly instead, his professionalism fully recalled now, and, spurred into action, turned to his First Officer. There was much to be done. “Mr Murdoch, order the crew to ready the lifeboats. I want all passengers immediately roused and directed to the boat deck.”

“Yes sir,” Murdoch was away in a trice.

Smith then looked to his Chief Officer. “Mr Wilde, have the rest of the officers at the davits directing the loading – Mr Ismay, I want you with them assisting.”

Wilde, Ismay, and the remaining officers dispersed.

“Perhaps we had better send out one of those distress signal codes as well?” suggested the blonde, in the helpful but demure tone of one who does not wish to belittle the authority of a leader, yet feels obliged to point out his error. “Morose, is it?”

“Morse,” muttered his younger, dark-haired counterpart, and Captain Smith vaguely noticed how he had a slight stutter: an unusual elongation of his ‘s’ pronunciations. “A CQD. And that new SOS one as well.”

“Yes,” Smith nodded, eyes distant now. A CQD. The most dreaded of all the codes. He turned to the shipbuilder, who was slowly, carefully rolling up his blueprints, hands lingering around each curve of the curling paper as though forever committing that feeling to memory; as though they were never to be unrolled again. Which was, indeed, correct. “Mr Andrews...” 

He didn’t need to order Andrews to do anything, they all knew. There was a no more competent man on the ship. Smith bowed his silvery head. “Mr Andrews, I trust you to do what’s best.”

Andrews nodded wordlessly, addressing his blueprints.

Smith turned back to the two strangers. “Now –”

But the captain would never learn the identities of those men, for Crowley and Aziraphale were already gone.


	11. A Building Panic

Aziraphale walked slightly ahead of the demon. He kept his face turned just so; just enough to hold himself from Crowley’s view. He walked briskly, and erectly, like a man who knew where he was going.

He didn’t.

It was a mannerism peculiar to him, Crowley had found. As they walked on apart he remembered: how, the day after Rome fell, the angel asked him if he would like a cup of tea; how, throughout the first night of the Spanish Armada’s attack, they dined in silence in a little Cornish cafe on the Peninsula, with red chequered tablecloths and a speciality in salted seabass. And – Crowley remembered an earlier conversation between sheets – how the angel flew over the Great Fire of London. To ‘see the colours’. To see it with his own eyes, the suffering beyond his control. Beyond his principalistic capability to ever set right. Beyond his capability to endure.

It was, he knew, the only way Aziraphale knew how to grieve: to carry on, business as usual.

From behind them came shouts, and mechanical clanging, and the cranking of winches. Whistles were blasted, orders were yelled, bolts were hacked, covers were torn off lifeboats. Like some ritualistic chant, men cried “Pull! Pull!” as they heaved at something. The decks of Titanic were crawling with crew running around in every direction, and, to add further to the overall feel of utter chaos, the four massive funnels overhead screamed and hissed as steam from the cooling engines was released into the atmosphere.

Crowley held back when they reached the near-silent stern. He let Aziraphale go ahead, take the railings between hands that gripped as though they might hold the ship at her present horizontality forever. He watched the angel keep himself as perfectly still as the surface of the ocean enclosing them.

Aziraphale had cried at the crucifixion of Christ. Crowley had patted him awkwardly on the shoulder in the musty tavern afterward; declined good old Guv’nor Pontius’ celebratory party invite to stay with him. Aziraphale had cried at the death of his first and last apprentice, sometime in the eighteenth century. Charles, his name was. Charlie. He was nineteen when hepatitis stole his family one by one. Aziraphale had nursed the boy himself. That night Crowley had let the angel weep on his shoulder; had held him and hushed him and passed him bottle after bottle until the light of a new day slipped beneath the door, and _ineffability_ became one of those endless, meaningless words that are impossible to pronounce, and better reserved for people with nothing better to talk about.

Aziraphale rarely cried. Crowley couldn’t blame him. You lived as long as they did... it would kill you.

Presently, Aziraphale laid his head against his forearms, across the railings, as though in prayer, and wept.

Crowley froze.

The tears of an angel, it must be said, are strange things. Shed in the moment of the weeper’s greatest weakness – his darkest sorrow and deepest pain and most desperate time – their ultimate purpose serves as an angel’s final line of defence: to unhinge the opportunist Adversary who might dare take advantage of such vulnerability. Also to humiliate said Adversary, because God can be a bit of a bastard when he wants to be.

Unfortunately Crowley, by technicalities, was fundamentally classed as such an Adversary.

It was for this reason that, instead of acting as a normal lover might have – by taking the angel in his arms and rocking him; whispering comforting nothings in his ear; perhaps poetically catching a tear on his smallest finger – the demon found himself stepping forward, shoulders and brows crumpling in shame, and blurting out before he knew what was happening:

“I’m the reason there’s not enough lifeboats, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale ceased his snivelling. He looked up, red-eyed and disoriented, as though from sleep. He blinked at his Adversary.

“What?” he said.

Crowley was powerless to stop himself. It was a physical need, as involuntary as nausea: it was as though all his sins had turned to ash in his body and his only salvation was to choke them up.

“It’s all because of _me_ , Aziraphale!” he cried, stepping forward and grasping both of the angel’s hands in desperation. His voice increased in pitch and anguish with every syllable. “Me! I didn’t mean for it to get out of hand, but the humans got my idea of economising in their heads and they just didn’t know where to draw the line! I never wanted them to cut down on the lifeboats but I did nothing to stop it, I didn’t even make them listen to Andrews about it! And I’m completely responsible for the small rudder, and I was the one who hid the look-outs’ binoculars, and I told Ismay how nice it would be to go faster... It’s all my fault, Aziraphale! It’s completely my fault. If I’d only stood up to Asmodeus, or seen the berg sooner, or – or anything!”

“ _Crowley_ , _calm down!_ ” Aziraphale had turned and shook him by both shoulders. When he next spoke, his voice was contrite. “Oh, dear, I do apologise. I always forget the effect that – er, _that_ has on you. I truly am sorry.”

“But… the boats…” began Crowley, ignoring the apology. Some semblance of sense was slowly slithering back into his mind, and with it, bone-deep humiliation.  “It’s all my fault.”

“I already knew about the lifeboats, Crowley, I was the one who set up the protest in _The Telegraph_.”

Crowley blinked at him. “You’re... You’re serious?”

“Well of course I am! I knew it could only end in tears. Most certainly my own.” He self-consciously wiped his eyes, and Crowley flinched at the sight. “Oh dear. We’re a right pair the both of us in a crisis, aren’t we?” Aziraphale smiled tremulously.

Crowley stared. He couldn’t return the smile. He studied his companion, barely daring to hope. “So you... you honestly knew about the lifeboats this whole time?”

“Indeed. After my peaceful protest went downhill –”

“What peaceful protest? I don’t recall any protest.”

Aziraphale looked abashed. “Well, er. Like I said, it, er, all went rather downhill. _Anyway_ , after that, I wrote to the Heavenly Host requesting that I be allowed to intervene regardless, but... Well, no such luck.”

“Even that’s a little too ineffable for the big boys, surely? If they knew there was a chance of... of _this_ happening.”

Aziraphale shrugged.

“Like they say, it is not given to us to understand His ineffable wisdom.”

Crowley made an incoherent dismissive sound that sounded something like “ _Pfft_ ,” and turned away.

It was then that Aziraphale remembered. And, on remembering, wondered how he could have ever forgotten.

“You know, Crowley, there was something important I was going to tell you when I found you at the bow earlier. But in all the... distractions... I’m afraid I forgot.”

Crowley raised his brows at him in a manner that was most likely supposed to appear politely inquiring.

With heavy reluctance Aziraphale went on after a moment, addressing the perfectly still Atlantic. The water should have been roaring past them, far below, but all was still. “On the subject of the Heavenly Host, the... aah... The Metatron. He, er. He spoke with me earlier.”

Crowley – most alarmingly – blinked. “The _Metatron?_ ” There was a horrible pause as he tried to register this unnervingly uncommon occurrence. “As in... As in _the_ Metatron? The Voice of God, the Chancellor of Heaven, the Great Celestial Cheerleader, etcetera?”

“Er. If you say so,” said Aziraphale, hastily banishing the image of gaily twirling pompoms in the highest Heavens from his mind. “The Metatron. He told me... Oh, Crowley, he told me that Heaven knows. About us. Only about our friendship,” he added quickly, seeing Crowley start in horror. “They’d just put two and two together, knowing that I hadn’t been discorporated by you for some time. It was bound to happen eventually.”

Crowley stared numbly at the angel. “What did they say then, about that?”

Aziraphale hesitated. He was wondering, not for the first time, if it was really necessary to tell the demon all this, and just make an already absolutely indescribably awful situation even worse. But this concerned the both of them. It was his _duty_ to let Crowley know. He had a _right_ to know. Eventually he forced himself to go on, realising how alarming his silence must be. He scrubbed at his eyes with the back of a hand in a feeble excuse for averting his gaze.

“He said... aah... He said that the next time I’m – you know – Up There, they’re going to... detain me... for a time. Just to straighten things out. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if you receive similar treatment from your side, as well. Something about the source of their information being mutually exclusive... or some such.”

“Batting for the other side, was he?” murmured Crowley humourlessly.

Aziraphale, confused by the idiom, was silent. The sounds of the crew’s efforts to free the lifeboats went on behind them, as noisily as ever, but it suddenly seemed as though the two were locked in their own pearl of solitude.

“So are you telling me...” Crowley spoke again, slowly, after several terrible protracted moments. “Are you telling me... that the next time we’re discorporated... we might not come back?”

Aziraphale winced. “Well...” No, he couldn’t lie. It wasn’t fair. Crowley deserved to know what they were up against. “I think that’s a possibility, yes,” he admitted.

Crowley’s eyes widened so much that the angel caught a flash of night-dimmed yellow behind the glasses. On the decks, there was a crash and a cheer, and the ‘Pull!’ chanting did not resume.

“Okay,” he said after a while, aiming for casual and missing by several nautical miles. “All right. So all we have to do is just not get discorporated then.”

“Right,” Aziraphale nodded in what he imagined was an encouraging manner.

“On a sinking ship. Without enough lifeboats.”

“Sounds like a plan, my dear.”

Crowley smiled cheerfully at him. “We’ll be all right. We’ll get a spot.”

His smile faded when he noticed the expression on Aziraphale’s face. “Aziraphale?” he asked, cautiously peering at the angel. Then, realising, he was seized by a sudden rush of anxiety.

“Aziraphale, you... you _are_ going to get on a boat, aren’t you?”

Aziraphale looked wretched. He spread his flawlessly manicured hands in a feeble plea for pardon. “Well... I’m an _angel_ , my dear.”

Crowley stared at him. “Yeah, Aziraphale, that hadn’t escaped my notice.”

“Well, I can’t just get on a lifeboat and abandon ship now, can I? I’ve got to help. I’ve got to save people. It’s down to my basic – oh, you know – nature.”

Crowley couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Aziraphale, you just told me that Heaven and Hell are out to get us! Are you honestly going to risk your life on Earth, risk the wrath of Heaven, just to save a handful of extra humans?!”

Aziraphale grimaced, but didn’t retract his statement. “I’m an angel, Crowley,” he mumbled again, suddenly very interested in the lapels of the demon’s jacket.

Crowley just stared at him in incredulity. Then he threw his hands up in the air.

“Okay, _fine_! If I stay and... and don’t _help_ you, but don’t get in the way,” – he was a demon, after all – “then will you promise you’ll get on a boat with me when the time comes? Yeah?”

Aziraphale looked surprised. Then he smiled, awkwardly and unsurely. “You’d... You’d do that, for me?”

Crowley closed his eyes in exasperation, then said grudgingly, “Yeah, Aziraphale, I would. Suppose I owe you, what with the whole, er, lifeboat thing. Now just shut up about it, ’kay? And let’s get a move on before the panic really begins.”

“Of course. Of course,” beamed Aziraphale, nodding at him. Then, unable to help himself, “You know, Crowley, when you want to be, you can really be such a –”

“Angel, what did I _just_ say?”

“Right. Right,” Aziraphale said quickly, holding his palms up in submission.

Crowley half-turned, then stopped.

“Er,” he said. “Where’s the best place to start? You know, with this valiant quest of ours? Do we just... tell anyone we can find to get on a boat as fast as they can? Or what?”

“We’ll find Thomas Andrews,” said Aziraphale firmly, nodding to himself. The memory of kind brown eyes blossomed before his mind’s eye. Yes. There was no one else. “Thomas Andrews will know what to do.”

~

 

Inside the first-class lounge, it was as though nothing had happened. The band was still playing; the waiters were still offering pretty cocktails; the people were still laughing and chatting civilly in groups, in their tuxedos and elegant gowns; in their airs and graces. The only signs that anything was amiss were the chunky few in lifebelts, and the fact that when walking one way, the tilt of the ship was so that it was slightly more effort than walking the other way. It didn’t seem as though a single person was aware that the ship was sinking from beneath them.

“Excuse me! Can we get through please?”

Crowley and Aziraphale pushed their way through the groups of people milling around.

“So sorry! Yes, please do excuse us!”

“Come on, people, move it!”

Aziraphale stopped, catching sight of something Crowley had not, then strode forward to where Thomas Andrews was walking slowly ahead of them, almost as though in a trance. His side profile was clearly in view, and the angel caught his breath at the expression on his face: a dead man walking. A dead man, surrounded by dead people, and dead dreams. Aziraphale didn’t need telepathy to read his thoughts as he stared around at all the grandeur surrounding him: all of this splendour, this richness, this mastery – _his_ mastery – was all going to be on the floor of the abyssal plane in less than two hours. Everything he had worked for, and everything she stood for, as a result of that work, was to be lost. The only thing standing between them and the tragedy of the century was time.

Aziraphale felt his throat close; felt, as he always did, especially around these Good Souls, that pain as his own. Under normal circumstances he would be capable of holding all that pain within him – of granting the sufferer a time of reprieve away from their grief – but tonight he was too saturated with his own sorrow to contain the crosses of others. And he knew that tonight, only hours away from now, he was going to have to experience the pain of far more people.

It was almost more than an angel could bear.

Swallowing, feeling his earlier tears pricking through his self-control, he caught the shipbuilder gently by the arm. “Mr Andrews?”

Thomas Andrews had been so consumed by his thoughts that he spun around in alarm at the sudden contact. Aziraphale took a half step back in surprise, but didn’t release his hold.

Behind them, the band finished their piece – the upbeat ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ – and initiated another equally jolly and equally unbefitting composition. And Crowley, struck by an idea and seeing Aziraphale preoccupied with Andrews, snaked away over to them.

Aziraphale stared deep into Andrews’ tortured brown eyes, into his very soul.

“Mr Fell,” the shipbuilder managed eventually, finding propriety at last. His voice was flat and empty.

Aziraphale, with difficulty, resisted the sudden urge to envelop this poor man in a big, warm, angelic hug. “Mr Andrews,” he said again, pulling himself back into sense. “Crowley and I, we’re here to offer our help. Anything we can do at all to warn people, to get them out – we’ll do it. Just point us in the right direction.”

Crowley, meanwhile, drummed his long fingers on his chin as he thought, watching the band.

Mr Andrews seemed to register the angel’s offer. Surprise, then resistance, both crossed his features… and finally resignation, seeing the determination in the other man’s eyes. He took Aziraphale by both shoulders and stared at him with such intensity that the angel almost felt it as physical contact. “Thank you,” said Andrews, with such sincerity, such heartfelt gratitude in those gentle eyes, that Aziraphale, discomposed as it was by the benign righteousness now enveloping him from the inside, felt the lump return in his throat. Oh, but how he didn’t deserve this! Such a pure, good, happy soul – how could he deserve to have his greatest work, his pride, his whole heart, senselessly swallowed up by the sea? Where was the ineffability in that? Where was the _justice_? “That would be very much appreciated, Mr Fell.”

“It’s Aziraphale,” Aziraphale blurted suddenly.

“What?”

“My name,” the angel explained, reddening. “It’s one word. Ah-zirah-fail. Not Azirah Fell.”

There was a melodious pinging sound behind them that reverberated, rather akin to a violin string snapping. And then another.

“Aziraphale?” repeated Andrews softly, trying it. Then he smiled, sadly and handsomely, and filled with ineffable tragedy. “It’s beautiful, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale, because he could feel his eyes misting up, smiled back, then quickly went on. He was vaguely aware that the band had stopped playing. “So, er, what can we do then? To help?”

Andrews, too, seemed more comfortable on this more socially acceptable territory, and with something to focus on he looked slightly more like his old self. “All right. We don’t want to be responsible for a panic, so individually notifying the women and their children to get to a boat as quickly as possible is the only way this is going to work.”

“Right.” Aziraphale said, nodding.

“There isn’t any sense in making a public announcement, it would only –”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” publically announced a voice over the din of the room. Aziraphale and Andrews turned around, startled.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the voice again, as the chatter quickly quietened. “Hi. If you could all just listen to me for a moment please, that would be really great.”

“Oh, no,” said Aziraphale in horror, staring at Crowley from across the room. “Oh no...”

Crowley, standing on the cellist’s chair, smiled beatifically at the crowd.

“That’s great, thanks, people. Now, I know a lot of you have been told to put on your lifebelts, and to dress warmly, and to go stand outside and all that, but nobody’s really told you what’s going on, have they?”

“Oh, no,” said Thomas Andrews. He took a step forward, then stopped, knowing it was too late.

“ _Well_ ,” continued Crowley, spreading his hands in a sort of apologetic shrug. “You see, the ship’s sinking, guys.”

There was a collective cry of horror, like a thousand birds taking flight at once.

“Yeah,” Crowley rubbed the back of his neck in mock-embarrassment, as the shouts of panic, the voices raised in fear and indignation, the questions and accusations and curses, began. “Truly sorry about that.”

Aziraphale smacked his palm to his forehead in chagrin.

And Crowley, from across the room, in the midst of his pandemonium, beamed at them both and gave them a little wave.

~

 

“Oh come on, don’t be mad, angel. It’s not like we could’ve honestly gone around telling people one by one to get to a lifeboat. Where’s the fairness in that? This way everyone’s got a fighting chance. Survival of the fittest, right?”

“You know as well as I do that natural selection is one of the most heinous and misguided of theorems,” snapped Aziraphale, pushing – carefully and politely, of course – past scrambling families down the narrow corridor.

“Not my fault! The buggers thought that one up all by themselves, I swear down.”

Aziraphale was too worried to give Crowley the glare he probably deserved as they ran down some stairs to E Deck.

They stopped dead when they saw the water at the bottom, maybe waist-deep, casting undulating ripples of light against the corridor walls. It could have been a poorly-placed swimming pool.

“So, er, what are we doing down here again?” asked Crowley, staring down uncertainly.

“Checking that everyone’s got out okay,” said Aziraphale determinedly. He took a step down into the scarcely-above-freezing water, and then another, and one more, until his foot reached the bottom. Despite himself, he gasped at the biting cold, shuddering convulsively.

Crowley recoiled in disgust as he was splashed.

“Yeah. That’s definitely not going to work,” he muttered to himself.

With a stern look the water ebbed back on itself, retreating down the corridor before disappearing around a corner. The only evidence that it had ever been present were the droplets trickling in broken veins down the panelling; the little pools puddling in slight imperfections in the levelness of the floor before running down the slant; the angel, soaked to the waist, staring as the demon strolled down the last of the steps and walked past him, comfortably dry.

“You do realise that we’re going to have to get wet sooner or later.”

“Oh yeah? Tell me, you’re not still planning on giving your seat to some ungrateful human, are you? Not when I’m down here risking my neck to help you.”

“What? Oh, no. No, of course not, dear.” Aziraphale’s feet made little squelching noises as the linoleum sucked at the soles of his shoes. He knocked on the door nearest to him before pushing it open and calling out, “Hallo, is there anyone in here?”

Crowley began to do the same for his side of the corridor, not bothering to knock. He wasn’t strictly speaking _helping_ : he was more just making sure this got done fast enough for them to get the Heavens out of there. That was all.

After another minute of opening doors at random, Aziraphale couldn’t help himself.

“Well, we _are_ immortal, dear. Humans only have one shot at life. Once they’re gone, that’s it.”

Crowley gritted his teeth as he banged open another door with more force than was strictly necessary. “Aziraphale, we are not having this conversation again. We’re not chancing on the mercies of Heaven and Hell, got it?”

Aziraphale didn’t answer.

“ _Got it?_ ”

“Yes, yes, _all right_ ,” said Aziraphale grudgingly.

Around their circle of dryness, the water was creeping ever higher. Crowley sighed.

“This is stupid, angel.”

“I know, dear. Once you’re wet you really don’t notice it as much, you’d be better off just getting it over with.”

“Not the _water_ , I’m talking about _this_ ,” he gestured around him with his hands. “The place is empty. We’re just wasting time, there’s no one down here!”

“Crowley –”

Then every light down the corridor faded out.

They both jumped in shock, then cried out as icy water splashed around them thigh-deep: Crowley, his point of focus gone, had lost his hold against it. Now it regained its righteous place against their warm dry bodies with a gleeful vengeance.

Crowley hissed in pain.

“Bloody Hell, that’ _sss_ cold! Bloody Hell, that’ _ssssss_ so bloody –”

All of a sudden Aziraphale, one step into the room behind his present

door, was completely lit up with a brilliant, harsh, and unmistakably divine blue shaft of light that struck him with searchlight intensity. Crowley, filled with horror and midway through his sibilant string of blessings, flattened himself out of view against the nearest wall, suppressed the almost overpowering instinct to transform into something of the ophidian variety, and kept completely still.

This time the Metatron didn’t bother with greetings.

“Aziraphale,” said the seraph, voice brusque and icy. “Prayers have been coming in this past half hour informing us that your ship is no longer functioning. We require confirmation.”

As if the rising water freezing the very air wasn’t enough evidence of that, thought Crowley contemptuously. He was biting his tongue to keep from crying out at the chill.

“Er,” said Aziraphale. “Er, well, yes – the Titanic is indeed sinking.”

There was a silence. Then:

“Are we to understand that the demon had something to do with this?”

“Crowley?” Aziraphale’s voice calculatedly adopted the tone of the mildly surprised. “Oh – no, no, most definitely not. He was with me when it happened, I’ve been with him all day.”

Crowley, in the dark against his wall, squeezed his eyes shut with a barely concealed groan.

“You have continued your fraternisation with the Enemy then, we note with interest,” said the Metatron coldly. “Despite our conversation earlier.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“I see a change of plans will be necessary. We would have preferred to have had a Divine representative on board if your Titan is indeed sinking – but we cannot risk your further corruption by the Serpent. You will be detained in Heaven and undergo a rehabilitation programme for the time being, until we decide whether you are still fit to denote us on Earth.”

Aziraphale’s jaw fell open in his horror. “But I _am_ fit! Please, Your Resplenden—”

“Prepare yourself, Aziraphale.” The light was growing brighter.

“No, please, wait!”

Crowley had heard enough. With a snarl of hatred for that abhorred seraph, he rounded through the doorway and dived headfirst on Aziraphale, straight into that terrible celestial light, so hard that they were both shoved under the water. A split-second later and all of the electric lights had buzzed back into life, and the bluish Heavenly glow – and the Metatron – was gone.

Crowley, on all fours neck-deep in water, was steaming.

“Shit, it burns!” he cried, splashing and writhing. “’Ziraphale, it burns! _Ssshit_!”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaimed in alarm. He grabbed the demon and pushed him under the surface, completely submerging him, then pulled back when he felt startled retaliation beneath his hands. Crowley burst up like a bat out of Hell, spluttering and gasping.

“What the bloody Hell was that for?” he hissed, not in anger but mere shock. His shades were hanging off one ear, and his sleek hair was stuck against his forehead. The rise of his nipples was clearly visible through his soaked white shirt. But at least the steam had died back.

Aziraphale wiped his sopping curls out of his eyes and let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, Crowley, I’m so sorry, my dear! I thought you were melting.” He realised that he was trembling all over, the horror and fear and adrenaline of the past ten seconds having now taken flight.

Crowley stared, then actually found it in himself to laugh. He stood shakily up, water sloshing noisily around him, and offered a hand to pull Aziraphale to his feet. The angel took it and stood unsteadily on the sloping floor.

The water was only up to their thighs in here, but they could hear a distant roar as more rushed in through vents outside in the corridor.

“Come on, this whole place is flooding,” Crowley took the angel by the hand as they waded over to the doorway. “ _Sssshit_ , I thought you were supposed to feel the cold _less_ once you went under.”

They looked down the corridor, down the tilt of the ship to where the stairs were, but they were submerged. In that direction the corridor was flooded to nearly the ceiling, and still filling up.

“That’s the way out,” said Aziraphale, over the gushing of the water.

Crowley took his hand again and pulled him back opposite to the way they had come. “Way to state the blessed obvious, angel. Come on, we’ll have to find another way.”

They sloshed their way up the incline of the ship, out of the water. Crowley, the only one with vague knowledge of the ship’s floor plans, led the way. Above them electricity hissed sparks that rained, and every now and again there came a horrific groaning, like an ancient tree contorting in the wind: it was the creaks and complaints of the hull as the stern was lifted slowly out of the ocean. It sounded like Titanic was howling in agony.

And _still_ they continued to make their way through the maze that was E Deck. Everything seemed all the same: the same long white corridors, the same closed doors on both sides, the same pipes and bright lights and sterile emptiness. They were making no progress, and all the while the incline steepened: a constant reminder that they were running out of time.

They couldn’t possibly get lost and trapped down here! They had to get to the lifeboats. They had to live.

After an indeterminable amount of time’s fruitless searching, the lights dimmed out again.

Crowley and Aziraphale froze. Then they faded back again, and Crowley had time to catch the look of horror on his angel’s pale face – and Aziraphale the look of horror on Crowley’s pale face – before they went out once more. And this time stayed out.

For a moment there was nothing but the sound of their heavy breathing, and blackness. Even their night vision couldn’t penetrate it. They could have gone blind.

Then the ship roared again, that awful moaning, as wood and steel were forced to bend in ways in which they couldn’t, and they both flinched in fear, instinctively seized each other in the dark.

It was like being in the belly of a monster.

Crowley and Aziraphale, overcome with sudden, paralysing claustrophobia, squeezed their eyes shut and pressed their faces against the other, praying for it to be over. 

Then the power came back.

The angel and the demon opened their eyes, flinched against the harsh light as their pupils narrowed. They took an awkward step back from one another. Met each other’s eyes, abashed at their fears; fears which, in the bright artificial glare of the bulbs overhead, seemed so foolish now.

Then they threw themselves into each other’s arms, and were kissing.

They locked themselves together with that kiss, reinforced their bond with incoherent moans of pleasure and despair and everything in between that rushed from them like the lyrics to some beautiful lament that only they knew, and were duetting. 

Fear tastes like salt, and ice, and the wasting of lost time.

Around them the ship continued its creaking. Continued its sinking. Time was ebbing away as fast as the water was rising. Every second lost was life lost; every second in the arms of the other was life gained.

How typical it was, thought Crowley, that they had almost six thousand years of each other’s company, of acquaintance or enmity or reluctant friendship, and then they realised _this_ whilst on a sinking unsinkable ship. Just bloody typical.

His lips at Aziraphale’s ear, he told him this. He felt the angel’s smile, small and sad, against his cheek. Then, after a moment, his murmured reply:

“I suppose it’s all just ineff—”

“Ineffectual? Inefficient? Bloody _ridiculous_?”

Aziraphale looked down with a sheepish smile. “Actually I was going to say –”

Crowley brought a swift finger up to his counterpart’s lips; shushed him. He smiled, briefly. “No, angel. It isn’t.”

Aziraphale’s lips curved upwards at the touch.

“Come on,” Crowley spun around, grabbing him by the hand. They were wasting far too much time. “We’ve got a boat to catch.”


	12. Unable To Stay...

The decks of Titanic were seething.

Where before there had been only small groups or solitary figures hanging around – unhurried, unconcerned, uninterested – now the place was filled. People rushed everywhere, in all directions, shouting and pushing and panicking: there were cries of distress, officer’s shouts, children’s wails, angry incoherent noises, even the shrill cracks of gunfire, and the disharmonic swell of cries that immediately followed. And, somewhere, unnoticed and unappreciated, the band was playing on, elegantly and leisurely; the most ill-fitting soundtrack imaginable.

The difference an hour makes. As easily as a dream becomes a nightmare.

Crowley and Aziraphale burst out of the Crew Only entrance and stopped dead at the sight, momentarily stunned. As one their eyes swept in mute horror across the masses, beyond to the rows of empty davits, one after the other, then back to the chaos. In that one moment, the overwhelming reality of the night finally – for Crowley – and crushingly – for Aziraphale – hit home, knocking the air from their lungs with its inescapability.

All of these people. All of them.

Trapped.

“Bloody Hell,” whispered Crowley.

Aziraphale was still staring at the people rushing by. There was a lovely blonde cradling a howling baby to her chest. A dark-skinned elderly lady moaning on the floor. A skinny, fair-haired teenage boy – no longer a child, and yet still not a man – hugging his arms around himself, completely numb.

Aziraphale couldn’t stop staring.

Then he jumped a foot as a flare rocket shot up into the sky directly behind him. Looking up, he watched it explode a second later in a bang and a shower of sparks above them as a beautiful firework, no different to the New Year or Bonfire Night variety: the kind that shines for celebration, not for salvation. For one brief half-second the night was illuminated, a circle of the surrounding ocean a desert of white, and then darkness fell once more, and cloaked the world out of sight.

 _Ships that pass in the night_ , thought the angel. He stared up at the sky; at the afterimage of the firework. _Then darkness again and a silence._

_God help us all._

Crowley jogged over to the railings, leaned far over and squinted ahead, craning his neck over the crowds. His sunglasses flashed in the firework’s dying sparks.

“There’s one boat left, at the very front!” he shouted over the din, pulling back, flicking damp hair from his eyes. “Come on, Aziraphale!” He grabbed the angel by the hand and pulled him down the ship, down the slant towards the water. Aziraphale, having no choice, ran with him. They ran through the crowds; past people somehow still sedately strolling; past the band... Aziraphale stared as they ran past, couldn’t help but do so: the five holding their ground on a dying ship as all else went mad around them, playing their calming music even as no one listened, only hearing it as background noise amidst the chaos. They’re not even dressed warmly, he thought, filled with angelic pity, imagining standing still in this bitter night chill. They must be freezing.

It would take Wallace Hartley, the band’s leading violinist, a full five minutes to notice the five thick woollen grey coats that someone had left hanging over the railings nearby for them. And when they put them on, they would be the warmest and snuggest coats they had ever worn.

At the Bridge, surrounding the last lifeboat, was a mob.

“Stand back!” ordered Second Officer Charles Lightoller, shoving people away with a bruisingly hard hand. “Let the women through! Will the men please hold back!”

It was utter pandemonium. The crowd was thick and desperate, pushing forward, swamping the officers lifting the women and children aboard. And only the women and children. The air was electric with panic and anger. Crowley hastily linked his arm through Aziraphale’s as they were almost pushed apart.

“Hold back, I say!”

There was another chorus of screams as two gunshots were fired into the air, and a pulsating wave following a half-second behind as everyone instinctively ducked and jumped. Crowley hugged Aziraphale, now stood behind him, closer, snaking his hands around his waist, sealing their bodies together as best he could from his awkward position.

He couldn’t see the angel’s eyes, wide and numbed, staring at Lightoller pulling a pig-tailed child, mutely sobbing, out of her father’s arms. He couldn’t see his colourless cheeks; his parted lips; the lack of curling breath that escaped them.

What he could see was Henry Wilde, also preoccupied, lifting the child’s sister aboard. Also distracted.

Relief gripped him so tightly that he felt momentarily dizzy. This was all going to be _fine_ , he knew. It would be all too easy to sneak aboard now that they were here. They were an angel and a demon, after all. Shape and size were but options for their kind: though neither he nor Aziraphale would enjoy it, of course, they could become lice in the people’s clothing; bacteria; small children (even in the given situation, and the alternatives available, Crowley’s demonic mind recoiled at the thought of being encased in such innocence, and he dismissed the idea as soon as it came); perhaps even women. They could, come to think of it, just fly away; that would solve Aziraphale’s crisis of conscience, surely? They could soar across the gaping ocean hand in hand, cushioned by the starry ceiling mirrored against the ocean’s glassy surface, climb higher and higher until they found an air stream to propel them onwards towards Newfoundland...

The optimism died away in a heartbeat when he turned to relay his plans to the angel and was finally able to take in the expression on his counterpart’s face. It was set, and it was resolute, and it was heartbroken.

Crowley’s breath caught in his throat.

“Aziraphale,” he said. His voice was unsteady. “Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale looked at him, and his blue eyes beneath their glasses were suddenly pleading with him. “Crowley,” he began, and his voice was filled with sorrow. “Crowley, I –”

“Oh, no! Not a chance!” Crowley felt panic and anger and horror all rise simultaneously inside him as his fear was confirmed. “We had a deal, angel, and you can’t just go back on it! Where’s your angelic _honour?_ ”

“My dear,” Aziraphale was choked up. “My dear, I thought I could do this, but I can’t –”

“Aziraphale, _no!_ ”

“Crowley, look around you!” the angel cried, gesturing blindly about him – at the children being torn from the arms of their fathers; at the women parting from the embrace of their lovers; at the families and lives being destroyed forever, fates decided by a higher power that was not their God – and his age-old eyes were shining now. “Look at them all! Every single one of them wants to live. Every single one of them has only one shot at life. And they will die, Crowley, if they don’t get on a boat. They will _die_.”

Crowley grabbed him by both shoulders as though he meant to shake him into sense. “ _I_ will die, Aziraphale, if we don’t get on this boat! And so will you!”

“Crowley, you have to understand! You have to! I can’t just leave them all!”

“We’ll fly, angel! We’ll fly to America together, and we’ll get a lodge, and we’ll lie low for a while –”

Aziraphale shook his head, distraught. “I couldn’t, Crowley! I _couldn’t_.” Gasping now, barely able to breathe and unable to speak, he stared around them at the terrified faces of the people surrounding them. So many faces, with their pink cheeks, and their frightened eyes, and their different clothes and different faces and different lives – all of them so terribly, heart-rendingly, pitifully human: all of them so desperate to _live._

How could he, an angel, leave them? How could an angel – an immortal being of God, Heaven’s representative on Earth – sail to safety, save himself, whether using up a precious seat on this vessel of refuge or taking swift wings into the night, when behind him he left more than a thousand to perish alone in these seemingly godforsaken waters? What kind of angel would he be if he did that? What kind of _creature_?

Crowley saw all of this in Aziraphale’s eyes. He saw the determination in them, the strength – he saw that he wasn’t going to be able to change his mind. And Crowley could almost understand. He’d been an angel once: he couldn’t quite empathise with Aziraphale’s reasoning, or feel guilt for not sharing the same obligation, but he could _understand_.

It was from this understanding that he reached his own decision.

“Okay,” he said, voice as calm and flat as the ocean besieging them. “Okay. But I’m staying with you.”

Aziraphale started. “Crowley –”

“What, you think I’m just going to leave you here to die alone, Aziraphale? You honestly think I’m capable of doing that?”

“My dear, now listen –”

“Don’t be stupid, Aziraphale, as if I’m leaving you!”

“Crowley, you’re a demon,” Aziraphale looked near tears now. Diluted redness was darkening the whites of his eyes. “You can’t stay here, you have to save yourself –”

“I don’t care about demonic proprieties! I’m not leaving you to die alone here!”

“I wouldn’t d—”

“Be discorporated then, it doesn’t matter! Same bloody difference!”

“I’d be back within a week, I always am –”

“No, _Aziraphale!_ ” Crowley couldn’t bring himself to say his fear out loud. “ _You don’t know that!_ You don’t know what’s going to happen! Heaven and Hell are out to get us, Aziraphale – who knows _what_ they’re going to do when they find out about us; about _this_.” He shook his head, and, realising how wildly he’d been waving his hands, clasped them together to cease further gesturing. “I’m not leaving you. I’ll die first – be dragged to Hell – I don’t care. I’m not leaving you. Quit asking me to!”

Aziraphale’s brows crumpled in pain. “Crowley, you must listen –”

“No!”

“Crowley, you have to get on this boat!”

“Angel, _no_!”

“ _Please_ , get on the boat!”

“Yes, _do_ get on the boat, Crowley, would you?”

Crowley froze. Aziraphale – instinctively, apparently – also froze.

Asmodeus. Asmodeus was standing beside them. Crowley felt his nails embed themselves within his palms, deep enough to etch eight scarlet crescents in their wake. Beside him he felt Aziraphale mentally recoil as he sensed the fiend for what he was as a physical shock, like touching a hand to a charged object – gasping in pain and surprise as the harmless static shoots through your body, knowing it to only be the calling card of a thousandfold greater power, lying dormant. Waiting for the slightest weakness to exploit. And then a sudden thought struck Crowley, struck him physically, as Aziraphale had physically felt his own horror: _how much of their conversation had Asmodeus heard?_

The fiend passed a contemptuous sneer across the angel, no doubt taking in his adversary’s huge frizzy curls, his fogged-up glasses, his endearingly glowing cheeks. Aziraphale looked like a half-drowned, overgrown choir boy, so ridiculously harmless and inoffensive that for one childish moment, the kid in the cool gang caught with the chess champion, Crowley felt almost embarrassed to be seen in such company.

Then he remembered whispered promises, and gentling fingers, and that hip-swivel action of the angel’s that had taught him the true meaning of ‘divine ecstasy’, and the moment was gone.

“Get on the boat, Crowley,” Asmodeus ordered again, elbowing Aziraphale out of the way and, now face to face with the lesser demon, plastering on a smile so false and shallow that Crowley could only stare. “Go on. You’ve done a terrific job here: go home and have yourself a nice well-earned  rest  in  the  warmth.  I’ll stay and sort out  any  little   problems, not to worry.”

He spoke so gently, so patronisingly, as always... But this time there was an edge to it. A knife beneath the words. He was like a parent losing patience. If Crowley didn’t behave and do as he was told, there would be consequences. And a coldness was now rising within his chest as he realised: if Asmodeus found out about him and Aziraphale... That would be the end, he knew. But he could not leave now. He could not leave his angel when this might be the last time they ever saw each other.

Aziraphale was watching him. He knew as well as Crowley did that there was no choice in the matter now: Crowley _had_ to leave. The alternative was for Hell to learn the full truth of their relationship. The alternative was death.

“Go, Crowley,” said the angel, and his voice was a note higher than usual. “You must. You can’t stay.”

Crowley felt a spasm in his chest, like a hiccough, or perhaps like a sob. _No!_ he wanted to say. _Aziraphale, no! I can’t just leave._

“ _Yes_ , Crowley,” smiled Asmodeus. “Go home.”

“You have to, my dear.”

Crowley was numb, and exhausted, and fraught; it made him less in control of what was happening.

He was no longer within touching distance of Aziraphale. He was being pushed, gently, away. A hand was in his, only for a moment – Aziraphale’s hand – then wrenched away. And now there were other hands – strong, careless ones – tightening around his wrist. Pulling.

“Aziraph—”

“Shh shh, come now, Crowley, don’t strain yourself. Just sit down now. There, there’s a spot just between those scruffy creatures on the far side, make yourself nice and comfortable...”

He was in the boat. He was leaving Aziraphale.

“Azira—”

“He’s the last you have the space to accommodate, I believe, Mr Lightoller...”

Aziraphale. He was leaving Aziraphale.

“ _No!_ ”

“And _lower away_!” yelled Wilde, drowning his cry. There was a cry from the women and children surrounding him as the little boat jolted on its ropes and lurched his insides as it fell half an inch, then began its slow, jarring descent.

He was in the boat. Aziraphale was on the Titanic.

He was leaving Aziraphale.

Crowley drew in a breath. He was a demon, he told himself, the words rushed and incoherent in his mind as the old mantra came back. He didn’t have a choice. Sink or be sunk. No ‘swim’ option.

He was a demon. Sink or be sunk. Sink or be sunk.

 _I don’t have a choice_.

Above him, on the Titanic, Asmodeus came to stand next to Aziraphale. Without looking at him he spoke, too quietly for anyone else to hear. Too subtly for Crowley below to even realise he was speaking. To an angel, his every word had the irritation of a pinprick, repeatedly piercing his skin, drawing little red orbs everywhere it struck. Minimal pain, minimal damage – but pain and damage to thine enemy all the same.

“I know what’s going on between the two of you,” said Asmodeus voice low, lips barely moving.

Aziraphale kept his face completely impassive; continued to stare straight ahead, straight into the eyes of his lover. Crowley’s sleeve was being tugged at by an elderly woman trying to make him sit, and he was taking no more notice of her than he would a gnat. “I know,” the angel replied, equally calmly.

Asmodeus shot him a look, quick and sly. “Then I trust you also know that you and Crowley will never be allowed to see each other again?” The fiend’s voice, still low, still casual, seemed to quiver with restrained malicious satisfaction at this. His whole body did.

Aziraphale gave away no emotion to the demon, even as he felt his heart collapse in on itself. It was a truth he had been ruminating over since the Metatron’s first unwelcome visit, but never fully accepted. He had not had the courage to. Now, he had no choice but to let it in. He kept his voice steady as he gave his reply. He would not afford this wickedness the satisfaction of seeing him – him what? Cry? He wasn’t going to cry now, was he?

When he spoke, his voice was thick. “I do.”

Asmodeus turned to look at him. Aziraphale met his gaze with the kind of stoic, sage calmness that only an angel can fully muster – even an angel on the verge of tears.

“Good to hear,” was all the fiend said. Then he turned back to watch Crowley again.

Aziraphale felt something hard lodge itself in his throat, sharp as splinters, and his eyes burn, as the future – as eternity – sank in.

They had lost. Heaven, Hell: they had won.

And now he was never going to see his beloved Crowley again.

The world seemed muted somehow, as though it were respectfully retreating from the two lovers held suspended in this tragedy within a tragedy. Crowley, standing in the lifeboat, didn’t see any of it: Wilde waving his arms to signal to those lowering them; the people still scrambling across the ship, nowhere to go, nothing to do but wait to die; the faces of the passengers around him, women and children, some waving, some sobbing, some frozen. He didn’t see any of that. He didn’t even see Asmodeus, smirking to himself in contentment, resting his sharp elbows on the railings.

All he saw was his angel. Aziraphale. Standing there, frozen like he was, watching him. Crowley looked up at him. He couldn’t take his eyes off him, could not waste a single second. Every moment could be one of the last moments they would ever see each other.

Millennia could pass, and it could be this moment he forever returned to.

Aziraphale’s cheeks were wet, Crowley could see, for they shone. Aziraphale was crying. He hadn’t held the classical angelic elegance of old for millennia, yet in that moment, it seemed to Crowley, his angel had never looked more divine. Was it his love for Aziraphale that made him seem so unbearably beautiful? Or was it Aziraphale’s love for him that gave that beauty? The beauty of true love, bare for all to see. After almost six millennia – after wars and plagues and arguments and long drunken nights discussing ineffability and omniscience and the world and what a wonderful place it was – after only one day of more than just friendship – one day of _love_ , sweet,  true,  eternal  love  that  would  forever  remain  in  his  wretched immortal soul – they could be separated forever.

This could be the last time I ever see Aziraphale, thought Crowley, calm with terror. I may never see him again, ever.

And I can’t even see him properly, because I’m wearing these bloody sunglasses, even though it’s night.

Crowley blinked.

He was a demon. He had to leave Aziraphale. He had to. Hell offered no choice. No getting out of it. Sink or be sunk. No ‘swim’ option. Remember? Same song, different verse.

“Easy now, easy! Together now, both sides together!”

He had no choice. He was a demon. Hell offered no choice.

Sink or be sunk.

Right? Right?

The last of the flare rockets illuminated the sky above the angel’s head as it was released, haloing – stupid, stupid metaphor – him in golden sparks of light. Like sunlight it caught the sheen in his hair, bathing his shoulders, illuminating him from the inside. And Crowley, those same sparks lighting him whole, cleansing him in brilliant, pure white light, shining from his glasses as though he were the source, saw Aziraphale, the angel of God, and imagined that this was the last look he would ever have of his soulmate: the angel he loved, the angel he was leaving to die alone on the sinking Titanic. Aziraphale was going to die.

_Aziraphale was going to die alone._

And then, like coming out of a trance, he suddenly snapped free, became aware of what he was doing. He was leaving Aziraphale. Leaving him. Making the wrong choice. And for what? For... For _demonic propriety_?

He didn’t make the conscious decision to move; it just happened. Out of nowhere he felt rope beneath his hands, and people as he shoved them out of the way; he felt the edge of the lifeboat beneath his feet; he saw the veranda of C Deck in front of him. It all happened so fast.

He didn’t even judge the distance. He could have made it if it was a thousand miles.

He _leapt._

There were cries of alarm from both the boat as it rocked, and from

the passengers still on Titanic; there was a furious “ _No_! Stop him! Stop him!” from above him; he heard Aziraphale shout his name. Aziraphale!

He slammed hard into the railings and felt pain shoot up his legs, pain he ignored rather than wished away; his sunglasses flew off and shattered against the floor. He frantically pulled himself over, scrambling and kicking, and anybody who had made to help him stopped dead at the terrible sight of his yellow eyes, wide and manic and animal and _glowing_ ; at their owner, the beautiful lunatic who had jumped back onto a dying ship. And then he was running, running down the deck, not fast enough, pushing past people, flinging himself through doorways, blindly, madly. And above him, before Asmodeus could grab and restrain him, Aziraphale too was running: he didn’t know where, he was just running _down_ , straight down to Hell if need be, just as Crowley was running _up_ , to Heaven and back if he had to. Through the reception hall, under the domed glass ceiling at the top of the main staircase; or through the C Deck entrance, to the foot of the main staircase... Running, running, he would run forever, nothing mattered in the whole universe but seeing him again, holding him, never letting him go even as Heaven and Hell dragged them apart...

“Crowley!”

Aziraphale was running down the stairs.

“Aziraphale!”

They reached each other and threw themselves into each other’s arms, collided in a crush as strong and perfectly directed and unbreakable as two oppositely charged magnets.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley moaned, burying his face into the angel’s stupidly perfect curls, taking in his skin, his warmth, his scent – the tea leaves, the rain, the musty paper – taking in everything, everything, never ever to let go ever again. “Aziraphale...”

“Oh, Crowley,” sobbed Aziraphale, holding him, caressing him, touching every inch of him that he could. “Oh, Crowley, you stupid... _stupid_ , slithery serpent...” but there was no conviction to his words, and barely any coherency, he was sobbing so hard.

“I’m not bloody leaving you, angel, so get that in your godblessed head!” Crowley cried, nonsensical. He pulled back, took Aziraphale’s face in his hands, stroked the soft skin beneath his insatiable fingertips – fingertips wet with the angel’s delirium-inducing tears – looked him right in the eyes, deep enough to see the intersecting rings of lighter and darker blue, ripples on oceans more wild than their own, flecks like raindrops sweeping across the surface. “You’re stuck with me, Aziraphale, and if you’re sinking then I’m bloody well going to sink with you.”

Aziraphale wept with relief.

“Aziraphale, I love you! I love you, Aziraphale, for God’s sake don’t make me say it again!”

And then they were kissing, kissing so hard their earlier affections of the day seemed almost chaste, so ardently it felt like the first time, so deep it went beyond mortal corporations, deep into their very souls. The Archangel Raphael once told Adam and Eve*(10) that when angels embrace in Heaven their souls become one: on Earth, apparently, it just takes them a little more effort.

* _(10) Paradise Lost, Book VIII, lines 626-629:_

  
 _Easier than air with air, if spirits embrace,_  
Total they mix, union of pure with pure  
Desiring; nor restrained conveyance need  
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.

They held each other once more, burying themselves into the other, and knew that they would rather die – properly, totally die – than be apart. They knew that for as long as they existed they would never be whole unless they were with the other.

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut, and pretended that they always would be.

But even at that very moment, dark forces were conspiring against the two lovers.

Asmodeus, gripping the banister at the top of the stairs, watched the embracing demon and angel. He was not used to running: his perfect hair had fallen over his face, and his perfect tie was askew. He was holding the banister with one hand that crushed the fine mahogany into splinters around his fingers. He was filled with more rage than he could ever remember feeling since the Great War. He shook with it. His suit strained.

An angel. And a demon. In _love_. Before his very eyes.

Asmodeus’ eyes were _on fire_. From thin air he drew the weapon from his side that he always carried, and had, until now, always kept invisible. His old flaming sword. It ignited with a _whoomph_. Rippling orange flames licked greedily over the adamantine for the first time in almost six millennia.

Crowley, over his beloved’s shoulder, looked up. As though in slow motion he saw Asmodeus bring up that terrifying sword, saw red shoot through his irises, saw his suit tear at the seams...

Then wings split from the Archdemon’s pinstripe-suited back: two massive, ugly wings that spanned the great entrance from wall to wall. They had once been white, as all angels’ are, but now they were singed matt black at the top as though charred by flame, the feathers melted together. Those that weren’t totally scorched were a sickly yellow, like nicotine-coated fingers, or the eyes of a hepatitis victim: tainted and sallow and unhealthy.

Archdemon Asmodeus spread his wings wide and raised them above his head like those of a snarling, blazing harpy of Hell. Chandeliers shattered above him and rained their dripping jewels.

It was more than just his heart that Crowley felt stop, in that one moment. It felt like Time itself.

He hadn’t realised before that Time is flexible; that Time can bend to your own emotions. That Time can take pity.

He was about to realise also that Time is not generous. That Time is also impatient.

The moment passed. The world continued.

And then, contracting those great ugly wings to his back, and tensing his knees, and raising his sword, and spilling all his true Wrath unto the mortal world, Asmodeus _lunged_.


	13. ...Unwilling To Leave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CAUTION: This chapter is the reason for this fic's high rating. Please heed the warnings.

Time, apparently, was done playing its games. There was no dramatic slow-motion effect now. No compelling blurring of the backdrop. No stylistic muting of the world beyond their breathing.

There was just Asmodeus. Asmodeus, and his wings, and his sword, and his Wrath, coming straight for them.

Oh, and Death. Death was watching closely. Circling; eagerly waiting. Death was excited.

Had Crowley been human, he would have passed out.

Instead:

“ _Move!_ ” he screamed.

He threw himself and Aziraphale to the floor as with one downbeat of those terrifying wings Asmodeus, hands outstretched like the talons of some infernal bird of prey, sword blazing with the flames of Hell, burst towards them. At that same moment, without having to think – it was pure instinct – their wings exploded from their backs the way petals burst forth in accelerated time-lapse photography: long glossy feathers as sheer white as snow, the angel’s and the demon’s, identical to each other.

Whiteness momentarily filled their vision, closing around them in a delicate, Heavenly pearl.

Then the pearl was shattered as they slammed shoulders and collarbones and temples hard against the veined marble floor, and all the air was knocked from their bodies.

Asmodeus’ terrible sword sank deep into the stone only inches from where they had stood but moments ago. His great wings shot out straight like sails snapped taut by the wind, breaking right through the wood panelling on either side of the entrance and sending jagged splinters blasting through the air. The stench of sulphur hit his prey with the force of a tidal wave, overpowering, suffocating – a weapon in its own right. 

Crowley, spluttering, half-retching, contracted his wings to force his battered body to its feet and dragged the dazed and bleeding – oh Go— Sa— _fuck_ , he was bleeding – Aziraphale up. Clasping hands they ran as the fiend – mad, monstrous, senseless – fought to free his stuck sword.

“Come on!” Crowley shouted, pulling his angel by the hand. Their wings curled around their backs in instinctive protection as they fled, pushed them forwards as they spun around the staircase to flee down the next flight. 

Behind them, Asmodeus was free and spitting at them in Hellspeak, an incessant attack of vowelless noise that sucked in the air to morph its screeching into words, and had all humans crying in agony as their ears bled. 

“ _Come on!_ ” Crowley screamed again. 

They twisted and ran down yet another embellished staircase, and the one below that, spinning down them so fast it was dizzying, dodging white-faced humans in their path, grasping banisters as they swung around... Whilst from above all the while came that sword, and those eyes, and those wings, only a staircase behind, slicing through the metal of the railings like it was paper.

Their feet met water, as sharp and cold as ice, lit turquoise by the lights above it, at the foot of the last staircase. Ahead were the ornate doors that lead to the first-class dining room, already partly submerged.

They didn’t hesitate: between Hell or high water, it turns out there is no choice.

“Come on, Aziraphale, come on!”

It parted before them, flew up as trembling walls of aquamarine to either side. Still ankle-deep the two splashed straight through it, and if they had dared to look back they would have seen the great wings that accompanied the harsh scrape of burnt feathers against wood; the face that writhed with hatred and hissed those incoherent cries of fury; the rise of steam as the water hissed and vaporised on contact with infernal skin and something else entirely that was not meant for Earth’s atmosphere.

Crowley and Aziraphale, their hands held so tight, gasping now with exertion and terror, dragged themselves through the doors and out of the water and ran up the incline of the ship. Too late, too late: Asmodeus had pushed his gigantic wings through the doors, and now, unimpeded by space, stretched them wide…

One great, white-hot wing knocked the two of them off their feet as he lunged at them from across the room. With cries of pain they were sent flying through the air, Crowley crashing in a heap on the floor, Aziraphale scattering candles and crockery and elegantly-arranged lily centrepieces as he was hurled across a table. Deep crimson seeped through his golden curls, and blood pooled into the smashed plate beneath his head. Crowley – dazed, light-headed from a collision with a table leg – pushed himself to his knees in time to see the fiend land on his angel, straddle him, bring that terrible flickering sword up high – see Aziraphale weakly raise his head, his eyes flicker behind their cracked glasses, wet redness run from his mouth...

“ _No!_ ”

With wingtips and fingertips and feet Crowley leapt at the other demon and struck hard against him from the side with all the force he possessed. The two spun through the air and crashed to the floor in a tangle of feathers and torn elegant suits and crockery fragments: there was the crash of broken dishes, the splintering of wood as wings cracked down against tables, the _vrooosh_ - _vrooosh_ - _vrooosh_ as the flaming sword was sent cartwheeling through the air to land sizzling in the spreading water.

For a moment, the Archdemon lying across from him, blood running down his face and glass from smashed champagne flutes matted in his hair, Crowley felt a rush to his head like triumph.

Then wings pinned him to the floor, and long-nailed hands lifted him from under his armpits, raising him up until he was level with the great demon’s face, somehow taller than he had seemed before.

Crowley opened his mouth, but no sound would come out.

Archdemon Asmodeus’ eyes were the most terrifying thing Crowley had ever seen on Earth. The rest of his face was normal – still smooth, still tanned, still superficially lovely – but where lascivious burgundy eyes had once been, now there was only red. There were no whites, no distinction between irises or pupils. Just bright, sickening, blood red, filling the eye-sockets entirely. They were wide and unblinking, and as Asmodeus smiled at him – a hideous smile in a mouth larger than any human’s that showed every one of his now thousand, needle-thin, whiter-than-white teeth – the eyes smiled too, a smile so dark, so malevolent, so totally, completely, inherently _evil_ , that Crowley felt his racing heart stop absolutely dead mid-beat.

And then Asmodeus _laughed_. He laughed and he laughed, and somehow that pretty, playful sound was even more terrifying than the full force of his crazed wrath moments ago. His opened jaws revealed a mouth as white as it was red from row after row of those same needle-like fangs.

“ _Crowley_ ,” said the fiend, still smiling that awful false smile, like a grimace of loathing. His whole face was writhing with hatred, but he was _still smiling_. “Crrr _ow_ ley...” His monochromatic eyes focused directly onto the little creature held in his grasp, seven feet above the floor. Somehow pupils were not needed to know that he was making eye contact. It was a physical force, his gaze. Like stepping in front of an inferno.

The Archdemon of Lust and Wrath smiled at his prey.

“Did you think I’d forgotten you, Crowley? Did you think I was going to leave you out?”

Crowley found he couldn’t speak. He only stared, unable to look away, into those horrible, nightmarish eyes that he knew would haunt him forever. 

Asmodeus smirked, and indicated the fallen angel with a flick of his chin.

“Is he a good lover, Crowley?”

Crowley stared.

“No, of course he isn’t,” Asmodeus answered his own question to himself, as though in afterthought. “He’s a virgin angel.”

Crowley was writhing now, wanting to speak, wanting to look away. He could feel blood trickling down across his stomach and somehow continuing past his waistband to his crotch.

“I bet _you’re_ a good lover though, aren’t you?” Asmodeus allowed real malevolence to creep into his smile now. “Oh, yes. Yes, I bet you’re _fantastic_...”

Crowley froze. Asmodeus’ eyes widened, the same way in which eyes that possess pupils will dilate when sexually aroused. Behind him china tinkled as the rising water carried floating crockery across the surface, but it was quieter than before, somehow. As though Titanic herself was ceasing her sinking just to watch the two demons in horror. Asmodeus leaned in ever so slightly closer.

“...Let’s find out, shall we?”

And he dug his nails deep through Crowley’s clothes, through his skin, through his blood vessels: sent his venom straight into the bloodstream. He unleashed his ultimate weapon.

It took half a second.

Then Crowley cried out as he _came_. One touch and he was right there, at the climax of all climaxes, his blood pumping so hard his entire body went rigid: not with pleasure but with complete _agony_. It was a climax of torture like nothing he had experienced before: it was in every cell of his body, searing him to the bone, burning his soul with that lacerating, lascivious passion, so deep no fibre was left untainted. He felt his teeth sink into his lower lip as he tried in vain to hold back the scream rising in his throat while the orgasm lasted and lasted and _lasted_ – he was being brought to the brink, in the throes of excruciation, and _being held there_ , convulsing and shuddering and thrashing, over and over and over, unable to escape, locked in his own body, in his agony. Blood filled his mouth – his teeth were sunk deep in his lips without his realising – coating his gritted teeth, running down his chin from his torn lips.

And then, whilst raping his body, suddenly Asmodeus changed the game: began raping his _mind_. Crowley could feel him _inside his head_ , white-hot metaphysical fingers peeling back barriers within him; ransacking his outermost memories, those least precious and least protected, ravaging like a hurricane, devastating and desecrating and debauching everything he touched as he delved deeper and deeper within. Images flashed before his eyes as the fiend worked, dragged there mutilated and disordered – senseless, worthless – and panic was rising within him now like a flood, pooling inside him, drowning him, filling every cavity of his corporeal body with all his terror and all his shame, panic so strong he felt his stomach muscles contract with sharp nausea, because he knew what Asmodeus was searching for, and _Crowley could not give him to Asmodeus._

Desperation mounted. His torturer continued to unravel, continued to iron, continued to violate, getting closer and closer. His every blow was perfectly executed to exact the most destruction. He had been practising this. This was where his greatest talent lay.

Crowley, limbs flailing uselessly, mind scrambling uselessly, threw all the coherency and all the strength he had left not into blocking out the physical pain – pain he could withstand, pain that was his alone to bear – but into protecting Aziraphale. His memories of Aziraphale were _theirs_. They were sacred. 

He could not let Asmodeus in! He had to stop him!

But now his torturer was too close, and all his greatest wrongdoings – rightdoings? – his most undemonly actions, his moments of deepest shame, his very worst memories, all were being dragged screaming and flailing before his eyes: there, distress at the crucifixion of Christ; there, regret at the burning of the Library of Alexandria; there, helplessness as, too drunk to sober up and save himself, he was discorporated by a ninth-century mugger. There, guilt at slitting a certain angel’s throat during a heated pre-Arrangement argument...

 _No!_ Crowley forced himself to push harder than ever before to maintain his final line of defences, even as the Archdemon, bored with this history, reached memories as recent as that night, and Crowley saw the iceberg before him again, felt his own anguish, felt the terrible conflicting emotions: the traitorous love for the ship, the traitorous fear of returning to Hell. Completely naked, all was laid bare for Asmodeus’ raging scarlet eyes, all things he _was not allowed to see_. And all the while Crowley could feel his defences flickering, cracking, buckling, straining against those fingers that ripped and tore...

Then Aziraphale’s face completely filled his vision – filled his whole world, even above the pain – and Crowley knew he had failed.

Asmodeus saw everything. The enchanted night they had played together; the hazy grey dawn they had first kissed; the first time they had made love, pushing his lover back into silk sheets and warmth and the onset of ecstasy; the first time he had held the sleeping angel in his arms and touched his lips to each eyelid... He was seeing everything, memories so dear and personal and for no one else’s eyes, and he _was mocking them_. Laughter, each syllable hitting him as a metaphysical punch, and it was hysterical. It was insane. And it was endless.

Crowley’s teeth were pulled out of the ruin of his tongue as he screamed and screamed and screamed.

 And now, as though it could have become even worse, Asmodeus was watching the angel and the demon together at their own climax. The deepest one, the first one, the last one, all of them... And here he held the vision, brought it as close to lucidity as he could, so that Crowley saw Aziraphale in the past, in his happiest memory, in his safest place, in his most comfortable dream, but felt only the pain of the present: the absolute torture of the orgasm induced by Asmodeus.

Asmodeus’ lips peeled back in the facsimile of a smile.

 _You like that, Crowley?_ The fiend spoke through his touch, gloating, enjoying every moment, words burning and spitting as white-hot brandings. _Yessss, it feels so_ good _, doesn’t it?_

 Crowley cried out in utter agony, both in mind and body. _Get out of me!_

_Oh, but you don’t mean that, Crowley!_

Crowley’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. He was so weak his poor desecrated body was only flailing now, feet twitching as through in spasm beneath the noose. Asmodeus’ laughter was filling his mind, all he could hear – and all he could feel was grating precise pain in every cell of his broken body, the touch of an alien mind tearing through his own...

Crowley didn’t see Aziraphale drag himself upright out of the pool of his own blood; he didn’t see the angel’s eyes blaze with golden, holy light as his whole body trembled in rage; he didn’t see his hands, incandescent, as his palms filled with the brilliant glowing white of the wrath of God: of all the celestial powers of the Heavens.

Neither, apparently, did Asmodeus – until it was too late.

Aziraphale pulled back his glorious wings and burst across the room with all Heaven’s fury behind him. Asmodeus didn’t have time to turn, let alone to run, to escape this avenging Principality of God: the angel’s righteous fist smashed into the Archdemon’s jaw, crushing him against a pillar and splintering it straight down the middle. Aziraphale just had time to see Crowley, knocked out of the fiend’s grip, collapse in a crumpled broken heap to the floor and lie still.

Then the angel’s right fist, still blazing with that golden fire that licked and darted, grabbed the fiend scrambling at his feet – desperately clasping the two halves of his hideous, broken face together – by the lapels and drew him up. He was angrier than he could ever remember, so filled with rage that the golden flames filled his vision. And Asmodeus, seeing that terrible, beauteous, virtuous fire where eyes had been, cried out in horror and writhed uselessly against the hand that gripped him. 

Aziraphale raised his fist once more. He was incoherent with fury, frenzied, seething amidst holy flames that grew ever stronger and hotter. Words flew from his lips, forced out through his clenched teeth, not in English but Enochian, the tongue of angels: a language of vowels and soughs and sighs that seemed to command the very particles of the air to sound with the echoes of each unearthly, inhuman syllable.

“ _Leave_ –!”

Fist crunched into cheekbone.

“ _Crowley_ –!”

Wet thud inraw muscle.

“ _ALONE!_ ”

And then, with the force of a thousand men and a hundred angels, Aziraphale threw all of the celestial power he possessed – all of his ire, all of his righteousness and virtuousness and goodness and purity, all of his love and devotion for Crowley, his every fibre and every atom – he poured it, all of it, into his smiting fist, and under the blow of that awesome might – the hand of God himself, the very will of Heaven – the infernal creature’s ear-piercing scream was torn midway from his throat as he was smashed deep into the ground, smashed so hard the floorboards beneath collapsed, and his body was pulled into the hole as the carpet sank around him.

Instantly, the room fell silent.  The angel’s fire was snuffed out like a candle.

Aziraphale could feel himself cooling from that white heat. He stood there for a moment, looking down at the erstwhile Archdemon: the body submerged in the too small and too shallow grave. Asmodeus’ arms and legs protruded from the hole at sickeningly unnatural angles, with his gigantic wings twisted backwards in a direction that was painful to even look at. His neck was totally broken; his head had flopped onto his chest, hiding the monstrous, misshapen face. Asmodeus was gone for good.

The demon’s angelic conqueror let out a breath, long and quivering. Whatever had been possessing him before – adrenaline, grace, God – he now felt it leave his body. His knees gave way beneath him and he sank slowly to the floor, gripping a chair leg for support as his vision wavered and little shimmering speckles twirled before his eyes. His wings flailed weakly in a futile attempt to regain some balance, and he struck out his other arm to steady himself; it was then, in that action, that he became aware of the pain in the hand of that arm.

He was only a Principality. Asmodeus had been an Archdemon of Hell.

Which explained why Aziraphale’s right hand was now completely destroyed. The whole thing was blackened and crumpled, a charred and petrified fist. His wrist was red and shiny, the blistered skin beneath his shirt sticking agonisingly against the inside of the fabric. Nausea rose in his throat, but all that came out was a moan. He felt faint.

On the ground in front of him, Crowley was stirring. Aziraphale looked up from the wreck of his hand in time to see his beloved slowly push himself up with both hands, carefully, delicately – but, as far as the he could tell, not painfully. His eyes were muzzy and unfocused at first, but they eventually registered the ruined body of the Archdemon. He looked from the hole in the floor, then across to his angel. 

Neither spoke. What they wanted to say couldn’t be expressed in words. Even in the tongues of angels. 

So instead they reached out – Aziraphale too drained to do more than raise his arms, so Crowley shifting across to him – and just clung to each other. There was blood clotted in Aziraphale’s hair, and drying down his face from a thick nosebleed; Crowley’s chin and lacerated lips shone scarlet.

They were still alive. Heaven and Hell had not taken them yet. They were still together.

Water slithered across the floor and seeped up their clothes. Further down the room, there was melodious chinking as plates and cups were lifted and carried by the rising flood. Chairs and tables began to float. The flaming sword, somewhere underwater, lay lost forever.

And Crowley and Aziraphale, one demon and one angel, sat in the middle of the dying Titanic, held each other as though their very lives depended upon it, and encased themselves within their wings like they might just shut out the whole world.

 


	14. Death of Titanic

Aziraphale produced a laced handkerchief – miraculously dry – from a pocket. With a hand that shook he wiped at Crowley’s face, dabbed away the slick blood from around his mouth. 

Crowley touched his fingers into the icy water that was creeping up around them and gently rubbed at the redness clotting by the angel’s ear. He felt warmth suffuse his lips as soft fingertips knitted the broken skin back together, and he pressed his own fingers into Aziraphale’s sticky hair. Felt the gash, the wetness. His hands caressed the wound, coaxing the split skin to seal itself. He was very deliberately not looking in a certain direction, where certain broken and melted wings were twisted towards them.

Aziraphale’s hand was still lingering over the demon’s mouth. Crowley brought his own up to entwine their fingers together, to kiss their blood-smeared tips. Then, very gently, he brought up Aziraphale’s other hand. It had no fingers – perhaps they were still wrapped around the hand in a carbonised fist – so he just brushed the hot, burnt, hard top with his lips. 

 It took him three tries before he was finally able to force words from his throat. When they came, hoarse and rasping, rough as sandpaper, they felt so inadequate it would have been comical, except for the fact that it wasn’t. Not at all.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Aziraphale’s corporeal throat had been nearly torn apart by his Enochian. He had to finish realigning his trachea before he could answer. When the  last  tissue  had  slid  into  place  he managed his own rough whisper back, with the lightest squeeze of the hand.

“You’re welcome.”  

They got up. Their wings melted into the tears in their shirts.

“So what now?” said Crowley, voice like gravel. He squeezed his eyes shut as the head rush hit him, then managed to focus on Aziraphale’s swaying face. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but whether or not we stay isn’t going to make a difference. And dying really won’t help anyone.”

Aziraphale’s face could have made God himself cry. “I don’t think I could manage a flight,” he whispered. Then, his whole face crumpling in misery as more knowledge set up camp, “or a morph.”

“Me neither.”

“I suppose we had better accept that we’re as helpless as humans, then.” The angel’s eyes defocused as he thought. “We’re going down with the ship.”

There was a moment’s silence as each being of usually relatively large power processed this humbling realisation.

“The rest of the helpless humans will be on the decks by now,” said Crowley, eventually. “Suppose we should go join them. I can’t feel my toes, in any case.”

“Nor I, dear. I can’t help but agree.”

Neither moved. The water, completely flooding the lower half of the room, reached their knees.

Then they left. They didn’t look back.

~

 

It was now nine minutes past two, and our angel and demon were presently climbing up the first-class smoking room, clasping hands, their sopping clothes heavy and hanging, like a second skin coming loose. The angle of the dying ship was so steep now that every step up burned the backs of the thighs, and gravity begged them to reconsider their upwards course. Titanic was going faster than ever. 

Someone was standing in front of the lit fireplace, staring impassively into the painting of Portsmouth Docks, so still he could have so easily been missed, and never seen again.

“Thomas!” Aziraphale skidded to a halt, letting go of Crowley’s hand.

The two stared at the shipbuilder, poised near-poetically, face illuminated by the soft glow of the coals. He was leaning into the incline of the ship, hands by his side, lifebelt discarded on the chaise longue behind him. His eyes were red-rimmed and dull. He looked like a painting of some tragic hero; he looked like defeat.

Thomas Andrews turned slowly, as though he had only just realised they were there, and stared at them apathetically.

Aziraphale felt his eyes burn in denial.

“Aziraphale,” Thomas Andrews said, eventually. His listless eyes passed numbly from the angel – soaking wet, bloodied, bruised – to Crowley – soaking wet, bloodied, bruised, and with his yellow eyes as bright as lamplights – behind him.

“Mr Crowley.”

Aziraphale took a step forward. His vision was so blurred that for a moment his dear friend was a faceless figure in a long grey coat, and boots that shone in the firelight. He blinked fiercely until the face came back. “Thomas, you’re not… Surely, you’re not…”

He couldn’t bring himself to ask it, because he knew the answer. He understood entirely. Titanic was Andrews’ beloved masterpiece: his whole heart was in this ship, and he could no more abandon her now, in her darkest hour, than he could abandon his own child.

Thomas Andrews would not be persuaded. He would not be forced. Thomas Andrews would die on this ship, and there was nothing in all Creation that Aziraphale could do to change that.

Aziraphale used his good hand to enclose one of his friend’s own.

“Thomas, I’m – I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

He saw Andrews’ eyes shine, his throat work as he swallowed. Then the great shipbuilder shook his head.

“No,” he whispered. His voice was broken up, low and discordant, as though any note higher and his words would shatter into splintered syllables. “’Tis I who should be sorry, Aziraphale.” 

Aziraphale gaped. “My dear Thomas –”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t build her stronger,” Andrews went on, his voice trembling, words faltering. “I’m sorry that I knew of the flaw and did nothing –”

“For Christ’s sake, Andrews, you couldn’t have foreseen this!” exclaimed Crowley suddenly, with a vehemence that took even himself aback. 

A sharp crash below the mantelpiece, muffled against expensive carpet. Rich amber liquid seeped darkly into its soft depths. The shattered crystal seemed to spit at them, dragging them all back to reality, to a world where there was not time for poetic goodbyes. 

Aziraphale cursed that brandy glass.

“You have to leave,” said Andrews quietly, a voice of reason even in a world where nothing else made sense. “Get yourselves on a lifeboat. Get yourselves out of this nightmare –”

“We already tried; the boats are all gone,” said Aziraphale. 

Andrews’ defeat was total. It physically burned the heart to witness. His eyes were tender as he told them, “Then be sure to stay on the ship as long as possible. Stay out of the water for as long as possible.”

“We know,” swallowed Aziraphale. Then, sensing the final goodbye on his dear friend’s lips, he impulsively reached out and enveloped him in that warm, soothing angelic embrace that he had resisted earlier. Andrews, startled but touched, let himself be held. 

They came apart, and Andrews said, as he tried his very hardest to smile, “Good luck to you, Aziraphale,” then, nodding courteously to Crowley, “and yourself, Mr Crowley.”

Aziraphale wasn’t strong enough to reciprocate the smile. His lips quivered as he said, “And to you, my dear Thomas.”

He took a step back, preparing to leave, but behind him, Crowley had remembered something.

“Hold on,” murmured the demon. The other two watched as he fished around in an inside pocket and then paused, finding whatever it was, before slowly pulling it out to stare at it in his hands.

It was a small black notebook, water droplets clinging to its leather cover, the edges of its pages wrinkled and stuck to each other. There was an intake of breath. Crowley, shamefaced, held it out to the shipbuilder.

“Here,” he mumbled, addressing the carpet. “I, er, I did mean to give it back earlier.” Then he forced himself to look at Andrews’ face, and found himself explaining himself, a guilty child. “It’s... It’s just what I do. Sorry,” he added, as though in afterthought, and for once there was true sincerity in his voice.

  Thomas Andrews’ hands were shaking as he slowly reached out to take back his lost journal. He slipped a finger between two pages, peeled them apart. From upside down Crowley could discern run ink, smudged diagrams, impeccable copperplate handwriting blurred into obscurity. The shipbuilder’s eyes filled as he thumbed through his notes: all his plans for improvement, all his hopes for the future, all his hard work and meticulous calculations and beautiful little sketches... all of them now totally useless. Worthless. He had poured his whole heart into Titanic, and already she was going to her grave. Tears broke and ran as a line of brightness down each cheek. He looked up away from his work, sniffing in a vain attempt to regain some composure, and nodded his gratitude at Crowley, unable to speak.

Aziraphale felt tears slide down his own cheeks.

Crowley slipped his hand into the angel’s.

“Goodbye, Thomas,” he murmured. “And good luck.”

He pulled Aziraphale, rooted to the spot, gently away.

“Wait!”

They looked back. There was an expression on Andrews’ wide-eyed, tear-streaked face, childlike in its innocent wonder, a kind of confused, belated astonishment.

“Who _are_ you?” he asked of them both, his brows low over eyes that shone.

Aziraphale turned and looked at him, standing there alone by the fireplace. He was perhaps ten minutes from death. Those soft brown eyes of his were pleading with Aziraphale to tell him the truth. Aziraphale held his gaze calmly. He would likely be seeing him again very soon.

“I’m an angel,” he said, simply.

There was a heartbeat of quiet, during which even the now continuous wails of the ship seemed to soften.

“Demon,” confessed Crowley, a second later.

Andrews looked between the two of them, standing there together by the rotating exit doors. The angel and the demon, holding hands. Each so beautiful in his own way, each the other’s opposite. Each just not quite human, now that he knew what it was he was seeing.

“I think...” he said, in a voice that was cracked and thick, “I think that I’ve always known.” And then, slowly, he smiled, brokenly and tremulously. “I don’t suppose...” He met Crowley’s yellow eyes. “That Crowley is your real name either?”

“No, it is my real name,” Crowley admitted. For a moment he frowned thoughtfully, before continuing, “But just Crowley. The first name’s only a human formality.”

The bright lines of wetness on Andrews’ face were reinforced as more tears escaped. He drew in a shuddering breath through his nose.

“Then, Aziraphale and Crowley, it was an honour knowing the both of you.”

Aziraphale felt a sob rise in his throat. “You will live on through history, my dear friend,” he told him, as Crowley lead him by the hand towards the exit. “You will never be forgotten.”

And then they were through the doors, and Thomas Andrews, the master shipbuilder of the Titanic, was forever lost from sight.

~

 

_“I was just thinking, how I don’t know your Name. You know, your real name. The name He gave you.”_

Crowley, running through the Palm Springs cafe with his beloved, was miles away.

_“I want to know your Name. Will you tell me?”_

They reached the Grand Staircase, a hive of first-classers dashing in all directions, and the voice in his head became soft and Irish.

_“I don’t suppose that Crowley is your real name either?”_

He saw Aziraphale, naked and resplendent, lying across his bed, in his arms, playing with his hair.

 _“I’ll bet it’s beautiful, Crowley.”_ _Aziraphale_ _smiled at him, like an angel._

Crowley was so caught up in his own thoughts that he could barely remember to put one foot in front of the other, to keep going. Aziraphale was the one dragging him now. They burst out through the reception-hall

doors and onto the deck.

He heard the angel’s intake of breath as he looked around him. Crowley looked too, his eyes focusing back on reality instead of his memories, and he too was filled with horror, so much that his train of thoughts came to a total standstill. 

The ship was more than halfway in the water. Before, there had been people running in all directions, people with the _option_ to run in all directions. Now they were all going the same way, and that same way was up. The crowd was thick and mad, pushing past them on all sides, all of them shouting or screaming. The water around the ship was white froth with the masses of thrashing people swimming for their lives, or clinging desperately to floating deckchairs. So many screaming voices. People were flinging themselves overboard, hanging off the empty davits’ ropes.  The incline of the floor was steepening faster and faster now; it could be felt beneath your feet, your calves unconsciously adjusting to the change. It was _visibly_ changing. Titanic, they knew, had but minutes to live now.

And so did all of these people.

Aziraphale, overwhelmed, made to turn away from the cries of the people he was beyond helping when there was a sudden pinging noise, followed by the slap of something hitting the water. What was that? And again, the ping and slap, then two more times. On the fifth, that was when he caught sight of the last of the funnel’s support ropes breaking loose, before thwacking into the water.

They stared in horror as the funnel fell, slowly at first as it crumpled at the base but then gaining momentum, with an awful metallic groan, straight towards the water... Straight towards the people swimming for their lives. Aziraphale rushed forwards, grabbed the railings, and _blinked_.

The people who had turned in time to see their death – see the tens of tonnes of solid metal swinging towards them – were screaming together and holding their hands before their faces in instinctive protection... but instead of crushing them it tore against their outstretched hands, crumpling like aluminium around them. 

Death sighed in disappointment.

Aziraphale spun round again. 

“Come on my dear, you heard the man! We need to stay on the ship as long as possible!” He grabbed Crowley by the hand and made to run up the gradient with him, but felt only a pull as the demon lagged behind.

 “Come _on_ , Crowley, we have to keep moving!” he exclaimed in disbelief at such reluctance. “Come on, Crowley, come on! You’re the one who wanted to live in the first place!” His eyes were so wide the whites completely encircled their brilliant blue irises. It was a mesmerising sight, one that Crowley suddenly found himself mesmerised by. Aziraphale stared at this irresponsiveness with incredulity. “ _Crowley!_ ”

Crowley reached his decision. Dragging his gaze away from those beautiful blues he shouted into the angel’s ear, so that he could be heard over the pandemonium.

“It’s Kokabiel!”

Aziraphale stopped pulling. Around them people continued to shove past, running for their lives. He turned around slowly, and his mouth opened and closed a few times before he found words. Words spoken so quietly they were barely heard. “What – What did you say?” 

Even under the circumstances Crowley’s cheeks darkened with embarrassment, and he found himself already wishing he hadn’t brought up the topic. He pulled on the angel’s hand and took the lead, dragging them both up the ship so that he wouldn’t have to meet that gaze as he spoke.

“That’s my Name! My real Name!” 

Someone banged into him, hard, shoving him into balcony railings above a lower level of the deck. Acute pain shot through his abdomen. Ignoring it, he climbed over the bars and turned to offer his hand to the angel.

Aziraphale was doing the translation in his head. Miles away himself now, it was only Crowley’s hand in his that helped him keep his balance as he awkwardly pulled himself  over the railings. The chaos around them was reaching its climax. 

 “Star of God,” he whispered. Then, louder, “You’re a Star of God!”

Crowley cringed to himself as he caught his old title. He jumped down from the other side of the rails, held up his hand for Aziraphale to complete it again. They stood there together above the writhing crowds, faces inches apart on the tiny platform – the top of a water tank, or boiler, perhaps – and stared one to another. Aziraphale’s face was near alight with his amazement and a kind of overwhelmed gratitude, as though thanking the demon for his confidence; Crowley’s was near alight with his discomfort.

“I was never any good at it,” Crowley told him desperately. Up there, away from the masses, everything else felt like background, just irrelevant detail. Aziraphale’s sodden wonderstruck face was filling his whole world. “It was the most boring bloody job, only there wasn’t a word for boredom back then so I didn’t even realise what it was I was feeling. I thought I was the only one. Kakabel and Rahtiel seemed to love it; they were the guys in charge. I was just the galley slave running errands.”

Aziraphale shook his head in astonishment. “But you don’t even _like_ astronomy!”

“Exactly!I never looked back after I Fell!”

Aziraphale just stared at him. Then they both jerked back to reality and turned to carry on up the ship. Crowley leapt down from the platform and helped the angel do the same.

“Then Lucifer spoke up, you see.” They were at another set of railings now, this set even more crowded than the last. Lights all across the ship pulsed as they scrambled over them. They clung to the other side. “And there was this meeting, and I just went along to hear what it was all about, ’cause I’d always thought it was just me who felt that way. You can’t imagine how amazing it felt to realise I wasn’t.”

There was a six-foot drop on the other side of these railings. Crowley took Aziraphale’s good hand in his and helped him lower himself down before leaping catlike to join him. Side by side again, they went on.

“And then the next thing I know,” he shouted, elbowing his way through the masses, continually half-turning around to check the angel was still with him, even as he held his hand, “the next thing I know, everyone’s out there, swinging these flaming swords around, and uprooting mountains, and hurling these tornados of fire and blood –”

There was a sudden burst of shrieks as all the lights on the ship dimmed together, as though the Titanic was an elaborate lampshade for one candle attacked by the wind. The two of them looked up in alarm, but half a second later they had pulsed back to life.

Crowley shot Aziraphale a wide, yellow-eyed look of confusion as they shoved their way onwards.

“Is that you, keeping the electricity going?”

“What?” shouted Aziraphale, almost tripping as someone pushed past him. “I thought you were doing it!”

They had reached the foot of some stairs. Stopping in front of them, they stared at each other in dumbstruck comprehension as it hit them at the same time.

“The engineers,” Crowley could only read the words on Aziraphale’s lips. “They’re still down there. My God.”

Around them, the ship groaned in agony.

“Come on, we have to keep moving!”

Crowley started up the stairs, shoving some old fool out of the way who was hogging them and intoning the words of the Holy Prayer as he walked. Bloody bible bashers. Behind him Aziraphale was still reeling from their terrible realisation… but was powerless to stop the immense pride for humanity welling in his heart. Oh, they were the strangest and most wondrous creatures! Here they were, in the darkest of days, the greatest of tragedies, and yet even now – or, perhaps, especially now – they were capable of showing such selflessness, such nobility. And they would die for it.

 _They will be rewarded_ , Aziraphale reminded himself. _They will not be forgotten._

They reached the top of the stairs and ran up the deck. In front of them was a priest, and – a sight so strange and wondrous and _human_ – at his feet praying was a congregation.

“Oh Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen...”

Even in their present state, and with Crowley’s revelation heavy in the air between them, they stopped and stared at the group for a moment. So did many others. 

“…Hail Mary, full of Grace, our Lord is with thee...”

Crowley dragged them past. The floor was so steep now that up here, at the stern, there was a space clear of people: anyone else up here was clinging for dear life to the railings. The soles of Crowley’s tailored snakeskin shoes grew grips as one foot slipped.

“I’m not sorry I Fell, Aziraphale!” he turned to shout, half-stumbling. Then, impulsively, he added, “I probably would never have met you, otherwise!”

They pulled themselves up the last final stretch, doubled over now, and grabbed at the railings with a gasp of relief. The knobbly iron was cold beneath their grip, wonderfully solid. They linked their arms through the bars and held each other, so that they were locked in place, locked together.

The stern of Titanic was rising faster and faster.

Aziraphale and Crowley clutched the other to them.

“…I saw the new Heaven and the new Earth,” intoned the priest from in front of them, even as he had to turn to grasp for something to hold onto. “The first Heaven and the first Earth have passed away... and there was no more sea...”

More and more people were scrabbling for the railings around them, pushing against them, all of them crying out in terror and despair. Someone shoved Aziraphale’s destroyed hand hard against the flagpole behind them, and he couldn’t help but cry out in agony. Crowley hissed and drew the angel closer to his body.

“…And He shall dwell with them; that they shall be His people. And God Himself shall be with them!”

Aziraphale, his eyes red and shining with unshed tears, turned his face so that it was against Crowley’s, their noses brushing. Their gazes met.

“Crowley! I just... just want to...”

“Aziraphale –”

“If we don’t make it –”

“We’re going to make it, Aziraphale! Don’t you say that! Don’t even think it!”

“…And God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes…And there shall be no more death. Neither shall there be sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain...”

Aziraphale let out a sob that was warm against Crowley’s cheek.

“...for the former world has passed away.”

The ship was at more than forty-five degrees now. 

People were starting to slide down the deck, their fingernails scrabbling uselessly against the smooth wood. More and more threw themselves over the railing into the sea below, but it was too late, they were a hundred feet in the air, they were too high...

Crowley felt his own feet slipping. Against him Aziraphale pulled himself up as he almost lost his hold.

More and more were falling, shrieking as they slid; the priest’s congregation was no more, the priest himself out of sight...

And yet still Titanic climbed higher, faster and faster, and still the angel and the demon held on, and still they saw the dying ship through one eye and their beloved through the other, even as their feet slipped away beneath them and they half-hung from the railings, and their only salvation was in their embrace. Soon, now.

Then every light on the whole ship went out as the engines – and their brave engineers – finally failed.

Screams rose in the darkness. The ship herself roared in grief.

Then Crowley and Aziraphale felt Titanic _snap_.

Around her midriff wooden planks were splitting, with cracks like gunfire. From deep within there came screeches and thundering roars, explosions and eruptions. Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t see the orange fire, the blue sparks of electricity, the shot of white light that lit up the great rupture in the ship’s centre. They didn’t see the backbone of the Titanic s crumple and crumple and _snap_. They didn’t even realise what was about to happen.

Then the rear of the Titanic, two hundred feet in the air, fell from beneath them.

And the world was upended.

Their screams were wrenched from their throats to vanish with everyone else’s, every soul on board. Gravity had never been felt so strongly, surely never – so strong there was no up-and-down distinction, no sky and sea as separate entities, no Heaven or Hell, barely life or death. They seemed to fall forever and ever, falling through chaos – perhaps even Chaos – all the while waiting for the crash when they would hit the water, a crash that wouldn’t come, like a future forever a day away, a horizon forever a mile away, an ocean another ten feet away…

The spray when they did finally fall horizontal again was so great it flew thirty feet in the air. Every passenger clinging to the railings was slammed against them with the force of the impact. Crowley, wrapped around the bars, gasped in pain as his arm twisted in ways it shouldn’t, and pulled Aziraphale closer as his ruined hand uselessly pawed at the metal, fighting to get a better grip. There were two great crashes from behind as the last upright funnels toppled.

They were horizontal again, level, the ocean so close. One woman cried that they were saved. 

 _No_ , Crowley knew. No.

And then, barely pausing to catch her breath, Titanic began to rise again, faster than ever.

Crowley saw exactly what was going to happen. 

“Come on, angel, we have to move!” He was up in a heartbeat, swinging a foot over the railings to the other side and extending a hand to help Aziraphale over – only Aziraphale couldn’t move.

“Crowley!” the angel cried, his good hand slipping.

“Aziraphale!”

Crowley freed a hand and grabbed the angel by the wrist of the blackened stump, intending to pull him up against him, but the stern was rising steeper and steeper, even faster than before, and all around them people were falling and slipping and screaming...

“ _Crowley!_ ” Aziraphale cried out in terror and pain as his hand slipped from the rail and only Crowley’s hold on his wrist kept him from falling. Crowley, pressed against the rails from the ship’s angle, groaned under the sudden weight and the pain of the bars digging into his ribs. 

“Hold on, Aziraphale!” he gasped, freeing his other hand to double his hold. “I won’t let go! I’ve got you!”

But he didn’t: he could feel his hands sliding from his beloved’s wrist as he lost his foothold on the bars; as he was tilted more and more horizontal; as he felt more and more weight heave at the hand that gripped the railings; as his yellow eyes grew wide with sudden panic as the inevitable played out...

“Aziraphale, listen! Swing your other arm up and wrap it round the railing, then pull yourself closer and I’ll pull you over!” Crowley instructed urgently. “Do it, now! I’ve got you, come on!”

Aziraphale panted as he swung his good arm up, but it caught around the rail first go. Crowley hauled at him as the ship’s gradient steepened so fast now, so terribly fast, as though gravity had been reversed; so fast the air pulled hungrily at his shirt, trying to drag him over to his doom, and how awfully far below it would be to the icy waters. Vertigo sunk its claws in like nausea.

“Now come on, help me here, pull yourself over!” he cried.

Aziraphale’s entire arm was screaming in agony, so acute he was unable to draw breath. A thousand needles! A thousand daggers! Such pain human bodies were made to withstand, stretching his veins, locking his bones, ingesting his flesh. “I can’t, Crowley! I can’t!”

“Yes you can, Aziraphale, are you an angel or are you a bloody _human!_ Now come on! Pull yourself over! _Come on_ , Aziraphale!”

And Crowley pulled at him, and Aziraphale’s feet found the near-horizontal railings and pushed against them, and he forced that pain out of his mind and focused only on _life_ , on Crowley, and what he had to do for the two to ever be interconnected. And together Aziraphale was pulled over, panting and gasping, as all the while people fell around them to their deaths, until they were both side by side again, on top of the railings, staring down at the Titanic as she went completely vertical.

“Hold on!” shouted Crowley. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the three gigantic propellers, the barnacle-encrusted belly, the dark sea. Waiting for them.

Aziraphale wrapped his disfigured wrist around Crowley’s own, gripping the ship with his other hand.

And then Titanic went completely still, completely silent, as she reached the peak of her ascent. Lying with their arms wrapped around each other, the angel and the demon couldn’t breathe.

“Hold on, Aziraphale,” Crowley’s words came out as a moan this time, a moan of despair. Below them were screams, and crashes, and metallic thumps, as people lost their hold and fell like flies. They fell onto other people, who too fell, onto yet more others. All around came shrieks for help. It was more than a tragedy, more than a nightmare. There was no word for such a massacre. 

How long they stayed there, poised completely upright, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, they would never know. Perhaps it was thirty seconds; perhaps minute after minute. 

It felt like forever. They didn’t speak. They couldn’t. There was nothing they could say.

And then, steadily, groaning and wailing, Titanic began her descent.

“Oh my God, Crowley, this is it,” moaned Aziraphale.

Crowley didn’t say anything, but the angel could hear his gasping breaths beside him. He wanted to turn, to look at him, to see that face again, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the ocean coming towards them, destroying, engulfing; the whitewash of the spray around the base, the people still falling; the ship, slowly disappearing from view, never to be seen above water again...

Forty feet. Crowley and Aziraphale pushed themselves upright, holding the railings with one hand and their beloved’s with the other. Warmth and reassurance on one side; coldness and doom opposite. 

Thirty feet. Every muscle in their bodies was unconsciously tensing,

preparing for the inexpressible cold now just seconds away. A million teeth, intolerant of such warmth in its icy chaos, just waiting to tear apart the lives so rightfully their own. 

Twenty feet. The hands that held the warmth tightened their grips as Crowley said, with words as jagged and distinct as shards of ice, “Do not let go of my hand. No matter what.”

 Aziraphale’s head moved convulsively in a wordless nod.

Fifteen feet. Aziraphale unlocked his strangled throat enough to force out three words. They came out in a high rush of strained nonchalance.

“Love you, dear.”

Ten feet. Crowley’s head moved convulsively to shoot a glance at his beloved. At five feet, he forced out his own reply, equally casual, equally splintered.

“Love you, angel.”

Their hands, if it were possible, tightened further.

And then the unsinkable Titanic, the Ship of Dreams, the masterpiece of Thomas Andrews, finally disappeared beneath the dark surface of the Atlantic, sealing the doom of more than fifteen hundred people, before finally meeting her own.

Crowley and Aziraphale held their breaths, and went down with her.


	15. A Promise Broken

What does it feel like to drown?

Aziraphale had never understood it. Drowning. You just _kick_ towards the surface. You _swim_. You keep swimming, up and up, until you find air. That wasn’t so hard, was it? It was built into the design, the ability to locate air.

There was just one problem in all this. Namely, which way to kick. Which way was up?

Titanic was above him. It shouldn’t have been, but Titanic was sinking up into the sky, a sky so black that like those mysterious dark holes in Space that man had yet to discover, it drew all colour into its infinite depths, leaching everything else to greyscale.

No, to blue. Aziraphale looked at his hands in front of him. His skin, where unburned, was stark white, waning to deepest navy at the edges. It gave the effect of increasing translucency, as though he was fading away, being consumed from the outside in. And there was something further wrong with that image, too. His good hand, empty.

_Do not let go of my hand._

His lungs were sinking in on themselves, deflating. His whole body was crumpling. Drowning.

Dying.

What does it feel like to drown? It feels like delirium. You are trapped in your own mind, your own pain, seemingly forever. Thoughts, anything but basic instinct, which is not really a thought anyway, are literally impossible. Hold your breath, and try to describe how you feel as your whole world is contracted from the inside.

And Aziraphale, who could recite Wilde word for word, and Dante stanza for stanza, Milton book by book; Aziraphale, who had stood before the emperors of Rome and winced at their grammar; Aziraphale, who would not permit himself his mid-morning all-butter shortbread before _The Telegraph_ ’s crossword lay complete on his coffee table… Aziraphale found he could not think beyond the words that every soul around him was also crying out, in mind and body: _air, please._

Death would have found this amusing, if he was the sort to feel amusement.

 **ENOUGH NOW, AZIRAPHALE** , he said to the dying angel. Fleshless fingers stroked his cheek. **IT IS TIME TO GO HOME** _._

Aziraphale jerked his head away, tried again to kick. He was so sure that the ocean had had a surface at some point in its history.

Death tugged at his sleeve.

**COME ON, AZIRAPHALE. DO NOT MAKE THIS DIFFICULT FOR ME. I HAVE BEEN INFORMED YOU ARE A PRIORITY TONIGHT.**

Aziraphale opened his mouth, but not even bubbles were left to flee now. _Go away!_ he cried. _I am home! On Earth!_

Death was pulling at him now, pulling him in a direction that further pressed against Aziraphale’s contracting lungs. The cowled cloak was billowing all around Death like a sea fan, or the proverbial Other Side of the Veil.

 **YOU ARE CONFUSED, AZIRAPHALE** _,_ said Death to him now, and perhaps he said it sternly, but it was impossible to tell. The white skull was suddenly right there in front of him, and Aziraphale screwed his eyes shut in a flash, for to look into the Eyes – Eye Sockets – of Death was to embrace death. **YOUR HEAD, IT IS NOT FUNCTIONING CORRECTLY. YOU ARE NOT THINKING STRAIGHT. LISTEN TO ME.**

 _Leave me alone!_ Aziraphale screamed.

**NO, LISTEN TO ME.**

_Never! Let me be! Let me live! Get away from me!_

**LISTEN TO ME, AZIRAPHALE! AZIRAPHALE, YOU STUPID BUGGER, LISTEN TO ME!**

Aziraphale snapped his eyes open. Achingly cold water pressed them into their sockets, stabbed at them with blunt edges, blurred his vision.

_There’s no need to be so bloody harsh, angel! I’m only trying to help you survive here!_

A white face. Black hair swaying and swirling in the liquid darkness like eelgrass. Eyes instead of eye sockets, eyes that would be yellow, if such a colour could exist down here. Warm hands, gripping at him and pulling him in place of those cold, fleshless ones.

_Crowley!_

Crowley pulled at him harder, jerking him upwards – or perhaps downwards. Sideways?

 _Who else?_ Even telepathically and turned away from him Aziraphale could imagine the gritted teeth, the ferocious concentration igniting his eyes. _The ship’s pulling us down, Aziraphale, and fast._ _We’ll be a thousand fathoms below if you don’t bloody work with me here and kick! Swim with me, Aziraphale, come on! Swim_ up _!_

 _Which way_ is _up?_

 _It’s_ up _, you great sodding pillock! Now swim for it!_

They kicked. They swam. And then, like being born again – though neither knew how it felt to be born – they surfaced. 

~

 

Titanic was gone.  

They surfaced amidst the remaining flotsam, and the shrieking, thrashing crowds, and the bodies, and the thousand cries for help. Everywhere, screams. Everywhere, people.

Fifteen hundred humans, and an ocean.

The former world had passed away.

Aziraphale gasped and moaned and sobbed as air flooded his starved and shrunken lungs, at first in relief but then in _pain_ , pain as that same life-giving air struck every naked inch of his skin, struck him raw, indistinguishable from fire, charring his flesh with ice. Aziraphale flailed like a human, struggled upwards, pushed down with his feet as though he could vault himself up and out of these flowing knives, and like a human he was helpless to know which pain was worse: the knives of the ocean,

or the knives of the air.

Crowley was still gripping his hand.

“That, angel,” he shouted in Aziraphale’s ear, “that was why I told you not to let go of my –”

There was a wail, and a splash, and Crowley was shoved completely under again as someone dived on him – a man, a _human_ , pushing him down, fighting to stay afloat himself.

The man grasped Crowley’s shoulder and head, scrambling to get above him, scrambling to get out of the water…

“Stop!” cried Aziraphale in horror, swimming over as fast as he could, frenzied in his panic and fury. “How dare you! How _dare_ you! Get off him!”

“I’ll drown!” wailed the man pathetically, and _still drowning Crowley_.

“I _said_ , GET OFF HIM!”

And Aziraphale struck the man, struck him ferociously across the face with his wrecked hand as hard as adamantine – again, and again, grabbing him by the lifebelt – the coward, in his lifebelt too! – striking him until he bled black in the dark; until Crowley burst up and out, gasping and spluttering and dragging in air with all his might, as though choking on his own throat.

The man scarpered.

Crowley, still hauling in every breath with a moan of pain, stared with huge incredulous eyes at his angel.

“Bloody _Hell_ , Aziraphale.” 

Aziraphale was starting to register what had just happened. He had hit a _human._ He had practically assaulted him. A human only trying to save himself, just as they were. He had made him bleed. Aziraphale felt sick. Since when had he become so heartless? So lacking in empathy… or worse, _sympathy_. What was this night turning him into?

“We have to get out of these crowds, Crowley.”

“I know!” Crowley found the angel’s hand beneath the water. “We gotta swim for it! Swim with me, Aziraphale!”

They swam. Though the remaining flotsam, through the shrieking thrashing crowds, through the bodies, and the thousand cries for help. Through fathers without their daughters, and sons without their mothers; through husbands, and brothers, and beloved friends; through _women_ , third-class women… far, far too many third-class at all.

A floating doorframe, merciful raft of refuge, was the demon’s target. He slithered over it, fingers blue and stiff, clenching the embellished carvings for support. Aziraphale heaved his wretched, sopping frame up after him, shuddering, gasping

It wasn’t big enough for them. Too narrow. Side by side they could lay, but at a cost. Their hanging calves paid it. 

“I r-reckon w-we’ll be all right now,” Crowley managed to gasp out, addressing the stars above, his teeth chattering audibly. How dare the stars still look so beautiful? he thought. How dare they still shine like diamonds, and stand like sentinels, ignoring the tragedy beneath them? They weren’t even worth his time. He wrapped a shaking arm around Aziraphale’s own, pulling them both together. “We’ll b-be all right.” 

Aziraphale jerked his own arm to link through Crowley’s and stared up at the hazy phantoms of their steamy breaths, curling together, the white a terrible juxtaposition against the speckled cloth of the night. All around them the cries for help continued, inescapable. A whistle was blown somewhere: one of the officers, calling back the boats.

“The boats are c-coming back, Aziraphale,” said Crowley. His words were, to Aziraphale, a lifeline. The one sound in the whole world that made any kind of sense. He clung to that voice. “A-and I don’t know about you, but I reckon we’ve earned our place on one by now, d-don’t cha think?”

Aziraphale couldn’t think.  Every physical part of him was already numb; he could almost imagine his mind succumbing to the same slow petrification, the curse in his hand spreading across his whole body.

“Li _sss_ ten to me, Aziraphale,” Crowley was saying. Aziraphale felt breath warm the side of his face as the demon turned his head. “We are _n-not_ going to die here, got it?”

Tears leaked out of the corners of the angel’s eyes and ran towards his ears. His throat closed even as his lips parted.

“I know, dear.”

“No, _lisssssten_ , and _believe_ it.” There came a splash of water slapping their raft as the demon moved to properly turn on his side. “’Z-Ziraphale, think of all the things that you love back at home.”

Aziraphale hadn’t been expecting that. “W-what?”

“J-just you think about it, y-yeah? All the – the things that you’re g-going to see or – or do again.”

When the angel said nothing, he went on.

“L-like your b-bookshop, ’Zira?”

Aziraphale turned his head. Met those eyes, almost colourless in the gloom, an inch from his own. The slitted pupils were so dilated in compensation for the darkness that they were nearly as round as a human’s. 

“My – my bookshop?”

“Yeah, angel,” said Crowley, nodding convulsively. “Re-remember that? A-and your books?”

“My books?”

“Yeah. Your – your bibles, and – and your p-prophecies, and your Wildes and Homers and – and those missing Dead S- _Sss_ ea Scrolls...”

Aziraphale’s eyes unfocused. “My books,” he murmured.

“A-and scones, ’Zira; remember s-scones? W-with s- _sss_ trawberry jam, and clotted cream? A-and the c-crossword in the _Telegraph_. Remember that?”

Aziraphale tried to swallow, but found he couldn’t. “I remember.”

“And the P-Proms? Remember when we went to s-sssee every one of them one year?”

Something not dissimilar to a smile was fighting its way onto the angel’s freezing blue lips. “I remember.”

“And – and helping the human race! You’re – you’re g-good at that, y-yeah, angel?”

Aziraphale let out a strangled croak that just might have been a short, quiet, broken laugh. “I am.”

Crowley reached out and clasped the angel’s good hand to his chest.

“We’re going to make it, Aziraphale,” he said firmly, and those massive eyes of his left no room for argument. “We’re going to see a-and do all of those things again. G-got it?”

Aziraphale nodded and nodded. 

“I b’lieve you, my dear. I b’lieve you.”

Crowley’s lips, dark against his ghostly blue skin, curved jerkily up into a smile. “N-now it’s your turn. What’re m-my favourite things, ’Zira? Tell me what _I-I’m_ going to see again. And we’ll juh-just keep talking, okay? The boats’ll be coming back for us, ’Zira. But ’til then we’ve just g-gotta keep talking. Keep _thinking_.”

Aziraphale thought of Crowley’s favourite things, and started talking.

~

 

It was getting quiet. A whimper, a feeble cry, an occasional distant splash; nothing louder penetrated the night. 

Other than Aziraphale. Aziraphale kept talking. Crowley kept listening. To Crowley, his words were a lifeline. The one sound in the whole world that made any kind of sense. He clung to that voice. It told him they were still alive. 

The minutes went by. 

~

 

Aziraphale was running out of ideas.

“Mozart,” he murmured, though it was possible that he had already mentioned that one. “G-golden Deliciouses.” He glanced to his side. “Crowley? Crowley dear, if I’m p-playing this game, then you’d c-certainly better be list’ning.”

There was no sound for a moment. Then came a soft, lethargic hiss in response, out of the dark, seeming to take immense effort.

“I’m lisssst’ning, angel. Jussss keep going. Love the sss-sssound of your voiccce.”

“Crowley, you’re hissing.”

“I know. Happensss when I’m dying of hypothermia.”

~

 

All was quiet, and unmoving. There wasn’t a breath of wind to ripple the silent ocean; no waves either, or frantic splashing from dying humans. This was because everyone was already dead.

The Atlantic was as silent as a graveyard because it _was_ a graveyard.

The bodies on the surface of the water bobbed ever so slightly. There were fifteen hundred of them, floating together, of all kinds of people. The fathers, the sons. The husbands and brothers. Beloved friends. The women. Each one was completely frozen. 

It had been a full ten minutes since Titanic had gone under. Ten minutes. Six hundred seconds. That was as long as it took.

Crowley and Aziraphale were still lying on their backs, against their floating reprieve, side by side. Crowley’s fingers were frozen around Aziraphale’s own, those of the angel’s remaining good hand, resting on his chest. He couldn’t have released this hold even if he had tried.

It was so quiet. Water lapped into their stiff hair, against their shoulders, against the backs of their thighs. Their skin was blue, their lips black. There were ice crystals in their noses and the corners of their mouths, in their hair and eyebrows. They had no strength left to warm themselves. Earlier Crowley had channelled all the heat he could into Aziraphale beside him – and had felt Aziraphale transferring all of his heat into him in turn – but that had been _then_ , back when they could feel their legs and their fingertips; back when they had cared enough to understand why they were waiting to die in the middle of the Atlantic; back when they had had strength enough to remember who they were – _what_ they were – remember that they had power enough to stay alive.

It didn’t matter anymore that Crowley was a demon, and Aziraphale an angel. Right now, they were human. Right now, with Heaven and Hell perhaps minutes away, the two couldn’t have seemed more insignificant. It was incomprehensible, but true. They were still on Earth, and still together: the future was unimportant.

Crowley, like Aziraphale beside him, was staring at the diamond sky above them. Stars, innumerable, the tiniest pinpricks of light amidst all that blue-black emptiness. The misty trail of an arm of the Milky Way. Strange little constellations. So far away. His languid eyes drew patterns, painting words and scenes and symbols out of the dots. He felt small, so incredibly small.

 _Star of God._  

His lips twitched. Then, slowly, brokenly, he chuckled. The sound caught in his throat on his second breath. Came out more like a sob. His whole jaw was aching from back when he’d had enough energy for his teeth to chatter.  He tried to laugh again. The sound had substance, and it floated above him like a ghostly spectre before the night tore it apart. Then, abruptly, he thought of something. 

“’Ziraphale?”

No response. He went on anyway. Suddenly, he needed to know this. He couldn’t believe that it had never occurred to him to ask, in all their almost-six millennia together. It was worth the immense effort it took to speak.

“’Zira, w-wha’sss your name mean?”

Aziraphale still didn’t answer.

“C-come on, angel,” Crowley turned his head, heard ice crystals rustle as they crinkled. “I t-told you mine, now you gotta t-tell me yours.”

Aziraphale was still staring impassively up at Heaven. There was no breath stirring the air above him. No rise and fall of his chest.

Crowley felt something cold stab somewhere deep. “A-Aziraphale?” 

A beat. Then, an octave higher.

 “Aziraphale?”

Crowley saw that there were ice crystals on Aziraphale’s open eyes. He saw that there were feathers spreading from beneath him, like blood seeping from a mortal wound.

He saw. 

Crowley felt his throat contract. He felt himself stop breathing. 

“Azira—? Aziraphale.”

The breath he held came out in fluttering little bursts as his chest convulsed. 

“No,” Crowley’s voice sounded all wrong. It didn’t sound like his voice. There was something jagged piercing his throat. Something filling his eyes, burning them. “ _No_. Angel, wake up. W-wake up, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale didn’t.

“Wake up, Aziraphale!”

Scrambling, weak and shaking with terror, Crowley pushed himself up with one arm and shook the angel, hard, as the thing in his throat grew, threatened to engulf him completely, and the liquid in his eyes clung to his lashes. The water around them rippled, shaking their raft. 

“Wake up, ’Zira. A _ssss_ ziraphale, wake up!”  Angry now, shaking him harder. “Aziraphale!”

But he couldn’t pretend. He couldn’t hide.

Aziraphale was never going to wake up. Aziraphale was in Heaven.

Aziraphale was gone.

“Don’t do this to me, angel!” Crowley cried. His lips trembled, then crumpled in on themselves. “Come back! Aziraphale, come back!”

Demons are not supposed to cry. Most have lost the ability. 

“Aziraphale, I promised!” Crowley wailed. “I _p_ - _promised_ I wouldn’t leave you! I promised I’d st-stay!”

Demons are not supposed to cry, but Crowley was powerless. “I _promised!_ ”

His eyes were burning, and then his cheeks, scorching pain, as something wet and slick and hot escaped, ran in rivulets to catch on his lips. Steam rose in wisps to join his breath where the tears seared his skin. They throbbed and they scalded, burning raw tracks down his face, hissing as they fell on the angel.

Demons are not supposed to cry. Just as it burns to express their love, so it burns to express their loss.

And now, for the first time in his existence, Anthony J. Crowley – the demon, the Serpent of Eden, the Star of God – squeezed his eyes shut, laid his head down on the angel’s chest, and wept. His arms curled up to cradle the two of them together, and he could smell him, even through the salt water – the books and the beeswax and the tealeaves and the rosewater hand cream and the Eden – that soft fragrance, that very essence of Aziraphale, everything the angel had ever loved and stood for. It was more than he could bear. One word escaped him before grief crushed his throat completely closed, sealing him in his heartbreak.

“ _Aziraphale_.”

Aziraphale was dead, and Crowley was all alone in the world.

Crowley, sobbing his broken, demonic heart out, buried his face into Aziraphale, his beloved, his angel, and waited for Hell to claim him.

~

 

The first crewman to see it thought he was hallucinating. So did the second. It was only when young Fifth Officer Harry Lowe’s torchlight caught it, then came back, startled, and captured it, and every other man on the boat stopped what he was doing to stare, that they dismissed post-traumatic stress disorder.

It looked like two fallen swans. The wings were so white, and flawless, and lustrous. But, no: these wings were much, much too large. Much too powerful to be of any bird they knew of. They rowed closer, barely breathing. Lowe’s light brought the strange beings ever into clearer view. 

They saw where wings disappeared into suits. They saw dark hair, and fair curls, pressed against each other. They saw blue faces, and black lips, and eyes frozen forever up at the Heavens, and eyes closed. Then they saw a slit of bright, reptilian yellow in the gloom, as one heavy-lidded eye slid listlessly open and stared into the harsh electric glare.

Later that night, when the yellow-eyed stranger’s wings had ebbed into his back, and he had fallen unconscious beneath the blankets they had swathed around his half-frozen body, the crew of Lifeboat 14 made a silent vow never to tell a soul of the two embracing angels in the flotsam of the Titanic. They all knew what they had seen – and they would hold it unspoken, unlamented in their hearts for the rest of their lives – but the rest of the world need not share their sorrow. The rest of the world already had enough tragedy to deal with.


	16. Forgetting

Crowley slept for less than an hour. Harry Lowe woke him from a mercifully dreamless sleep, waving a brilliant green flare over his head, crying something in a voice that to the demon was just indistinguishable, irritating noise, like an insect’s hum. He didn’t care enough to force the words to make sense. His eyes slid dully around the little boat, taking in Lowe’s shining black boots, and the green-tinted faces of the wan crewmen, and the one or two other blanket-wrapped survivors pulled from the water. Letting his eyes fall shut again, he drifted back into unconsciousness.

He next opened his eyes under a dawn: deep pink, blood diluted in water. Again there were voices, and this time he could discern a difference between some. Lowe’s agreeable Welsh accent, Second Officer Charles Lightoller’s achingly proper English. So he had survived then. Crowley tried to attach emotions to his observations, but found he couldn’t.

The next time he cared to look upon the world again there was a ship alongside them, a steamer whose brass lettering proclaimed her to be the Carpathia. So they were saved. Right.

He was helped to his feet by someone; he was helped up the ship’s ladder by someone. Then someone led him inside, and someone sat him down, and someone pressed a mug of weak tea in his hands. It turned out that he had been right, when he told Asmodeus that people united in tragedy. Their kindness made him nauseous at times, grateful at others. Mostly he didn’t notice.

Sometimes people tried to talk to him: they asked him his name, if he was hungry, if he wanted to talk. He didn’t. Sometimes Harry Lowe would come in to see him; would sit by him on the floor, ask him the same meaningless questions. Crowley would answer monosyllabically. He knew Lowe would never forget what he had seen, never forget him. 

Mostly, though, he was left alone: too many others were dealing with their own grief to act as counsellors.

Children would point at his eyes – ask their mothers what was wrong with him – and the adults would start in surprise when they saw them, hurry the youngsters away. Crowley had given his lost sunglasses some consideration, but when he had been strong enough to materialise a pair into his hands – and had remembered the last time he had worn them, the kind of hopes he had had – he found he was unable to settle them back on the bridge of his nose. It didn’t matter how naked and exposed and inherently demonic he felt: he could not revert to his old ways like nothing had happened. So he kept his yellow snake eyes uncovered and unhidden, and listened apathetically as people formed their opinions amongst themselves.

The night they sailed into New York Harbour, it rained. Crowley didn’t even realise he was doing it. He let the rain soak into him, drip from his hair down his face, saturate his eyebrows before running into his eyes. He stood there by himself on the deck: a solitary, impassive figure, beautiful and tragic, away from the twosomes or threesomes huddling beneath umbrellas, or tugging thin blankets closer. He looked up as the Statue of Liberty sailed past, stared blankly at that equally blank face, and thought about nothing.

The port was, of course, a flurry of photographers and reporters. Flashing lights, raised voices, intrusive questions. Crowley pushed his way past, dissolving the film of a man who had been thoughtless enough to take his picture.

He carried on walking down the dock. Under a bridge. Round a corner. Along a lamplit cobbled path by the harbour. His reprieve was over, he knew. There was no use running from it. He walked with his hands in his pockets, hair dishevelled across his tired, pale face, and stared expressionlessly ahead. 

He didn’t have to wait long.

“Hello, Crowzley.”

Crowley came to a halt where he stood, spotlighted beneath a street lamp. He recognised the voice. The strange accent, the force with which each word was delivered. He turned unhurriedly around. Regarded the shadowy figure in the gloom between his circle of light and the next with a vague nod.

“Beëlzebub.”

Beëlzebub stepped forward under the streetlamp’s glare so that, like a curtain being lifted, his face was brought into the light. He was in his favoured humanoid form: a tall, smooth-skinned man of perhaps forty. His hair, long enough to be tied back from his face, was straight and jet black, and his eyes, too, were black, beneath thin brows. He wore his indisputable authority the way a shark-hunter wears necklaces of jagged teeth. He wore it like diamonds.

“Crowzley,” said Beëlzebub again, his cold smile barely perceptible. “It hazz been _muzzch_ too long.”

There was something so alarming about that voice, something that made all who heard it – demons and humans alike – feel a near uncontrollable urge to turn and flee whilst they still could. Perhaps it was the rasping, unpredictable accent; perhaps it was the stress he applied to some words but not others. He sounded like a cat playing with a mouse: letting it go, letting it believe its freedom, then striking it back with one flash of sharp claws. He tormented his audience with that voice.

Crowley, however, wasn’t in the mood. Beëlzebub regarded him curiously at his uncharacteristic silence.

“Firzzt things firzzt,” he went on. “I muzzt offer my compliments on thy tremendouzz succezz. We are all very pleased with thy work.”

Silence again. Crowley waited for the ‘ _but_ ’.

“ _However_ , there have been one or two... dizzcrepanzies... brought to light that we feel we muzzt set straight.” He took a step forward, so that he stood directly beneath the streetlight, and only a foot from the other demon. Crowley felt his heart quicken in sudden, instinctive fear.

“Tell me, Crowzley, when was the lazzt time thou were dragged to Hell?”

Beëlzebub didn’t wait for him to answer.

In one quick flash as swift and sudden and unpredictable as an attacking serpent, his hand struck out and grasped Crowley’s temple, gripped it so tight Crowley felt flesh buckle beneath long chiselled fingernails. He would have screamed at the pain – white hot, wracking every inch of his body, electrocuting it, _vaporising_ it – but he couldn’t move. He could only shut his eyes as his physical body spontaneously combusted and passed from our dimension into somewhere else entirely, with a whirl like air sucking into the space left behind from a vacuum. Which was exactly what it was.

It was over in less than a second. Crowley didn’t open his eyes – rather, Hell opened _into_ his eyes. On Earth, darkness comes from the simple lack of light; on Earth, light is alive, and reigns uncontested.

In Hell, light has a competitor. In Hell, there is a different kind of darkness: a kind that is also alive.

Like pupils dilating in shadow, Crowley watched as the passive black of his vision was slowly obscured by this living darkness, creeping like fog, darker than the darkest reach of a starless night sky. He must be deep underground, he knew, or in the farthest reach of the nether regions, for demons would drive out this abhorred darkness from their cities and fortresses with their magic. They hated and feared it, and Crowley too was afraid. But it was not unbearable. All demons could handle the darkness.

The next thing he became aware of was the heat, which was somewhere in excess of four hundred degrees Celsius. It sucked at his skin, boiled his blood vessels, burned his body without charring… but it, too, was not unbearable. He could handle the heat. All demons could.

Knowledge of pain followed next… Very localised pain, in his wings, and palms, and feet…

Ah. Crowley didn’t need to see this to confirm it. 

How original of them.

It was the lapping whisper of a soft stream that finally gave away his basic location. There is no water in Hell: its five rivers are composed of their namesakes. Crowley had spent more time on Earth than in Hell, and thus he knew little of its geography. Had he paid more attention to the Greek mythology tomes that A— that he had been loaned from time to time, he would have realised which river it was that he was nailed alongside. He would have realised that he stood next to the worst one of all.

The soft bubbling sounds were making him feel oddly drowsy. It was a strange feeling. Demons don’t usually experience tiredness, unless they want to.

There was a crack like a lightning strike as Beëlzebub clapped his hands together and slowly drew them apart, containing between them a tiny floating speck of enchanted Dark Light, which cast a feeble, colourless glow around him. From the light Crowley discerned stalagmites, fat and fanglike; a floor shot through with veins of an indescribable, unearthly colour; the river, a grey and wispy trickle of something alarmingly nonliquid. And from the darkness he discerned the immensity of the cave; the stalactite counterparts obscured; this hollow bubble inside the rock of Hell.

Beëlzebub, one knee-high boot on the stumpy beginnings of a stalagmite, was examining his fingernails. Probably picking at the skin stuck beneath them. He stretched his skinless wings lazily.

“So Crowzley,” he said, casually continuing their conversation. “I truzzt that thou hast heard the news? Everyone in Hell izz going mad for thizz little piece of gozzip.”

Crowley hadn’t thought he would feel afraid of Hell. He had expected to take all his inevitable torture with an expressionless shrug, to even welcome the pain. He wasn’t supposed to feel this scared.

_Play along. Give him what he wants._

“What gossip?” he said obediently, voice lifeless.

_Coward._

Beëlzebub looked up, brows raised, and began to walk towards him.

“Oh but Crowzley, surely thou doest know? Why, so the rumours go, thou wast prezzent at the time!”

Crowley could have moaned. He had almost forgotten.

The great demon stood in front of him, stared at him coldly. Crowley realised that there were flies, hundreds of fat, black flies with bodies the size of his thumbnail, crawling through his tormentor’s hair.

“Azzmodeuzz always was an arouzzing little thorn in my zide,” said

Beëlzebub, shrugging to himself. “I cannot pretend to grieve for the loss of that saucy incubus. However, I muzzt zay I rather admired his work ethic – which, by the way, little Crowzley, _I CANNOT ZAY FOR THYSELF!_ ”

Crowley recoiled in terror at the sudden fury, the frightening switch in temperament. The mercuriality brought to mind a wild animal, mean and unpredictable, incapable of mercy or reasoning, and Crowley was ashamed to realise he was cowering in fear into his burning nails, barely daring to move.

Beëlzebub’s eyes were boring into Crowley’s very soul. Calmly, he went on. 

“But that, I am afraid, is a topic for another torture. I have muzzch bigger fizsh to skin with thou, Crowzley.” A pause. His eyes widened in anticipatory pleasure. “ _Muzzch_ bigger.”

Crowley was frozen in fear.

Beëlzebub went on, languidly now, all fire gone.

“So, azz the story goes, Azzmodeuzz was smote by the flaming hand of none other than a particular angel that thou izz well acquainted with.” The Lord’s eyebrows rose in mock ingenuousness. “Zeemz ever so odd, does it not, Crowzley? That an angel on a zzship with not one but _two_ demons could zzuczzeed in destroying the Archdemon, and not the little demon too low in rank for even the title of imp?” Beëlzebub pursed his lips, feigning thought. “Zeemz very odd to me.”

Crowley breathed deeply through his nose, so sharply the sulphur and ammonia and fluorite and Satan knew what else was there seared his nostrils. His heart was a caged dove, pounding itself into senselessness against the walls of its prison as it fought to escape.

Beëlzebub was no longer half-smiling. There was no humour in his face now. No more playing.

“I would like for thou to tell me his name,” he said shortly. A bluebottle, stark against his white forehead, ran across his skin before disappearing again.

Crowley stared.

He should have known better. He should have realised. He shouldn’t have hesitated.

Crowley hesitated.

Beëlzebub struck him across the face with a blow as strong as a swinging granite pendulum, and with the buzz of a thousand flies startled into flight. Then he struck him again, backhand. In a heartbeat he was an inch from Crowley’s face, eyes seething with flame, lips curling into a snarl from which a dozen flies escaped and poured against his face, and Crowley made to scream in terror but instead…

“ _Aziraphale!_ ” he screamed. “ _His name was Aziraphale!_ ”

Beëlzebub didn’t retract his face. When he spoke, the flies in his mouth landed all over Crowley’s cheeks, on his eyelids, on his lips, on his open wounds.

“And _what_ didst thou do with him?”

Crowley found he couldn’t lie. He couldn’t remember how to. He could no more lie to this fiend than he could escape him. 

Beëlzebub raised his black talons once more.

“ _I loved him!_ ” Crowley screamed, not in fear this time but in _anger_.  A whole chorus of Crowleys reverberated back at him from around the massive cave, all of them echoing his terrible truth, as though in support. _Loved him! Loved him! Loved him!_ over and over and over. Crowley’s yellow eyes were livid with rage, and his forked black tongue was flickering between the sharpened points of his teeth in a frenzied, spitting hiss.

“I loved him, you bloody fiend! I loved him and I still love him and there’ _sss_ not a bloody thing you can do to ever _ssstop_ me from loving him, because I never will! You can keep me down here for a thousand eternities, and Heaven can keep him for a thousand eternities, and you can beat me and torture me and piece Asmodeus back together to screw me into _sssssensssselesssssnessss_ again, but you won’t win!”

Beëlzebub stared at him from beneath heavy brows.

“Ssso go ahead, _’Bub_ , give it your best shot! Do whatever you want to me, I couldn’t care less!” Crowley wished he could shut up now, but the words just kept pouring from him. “Bring in the specialists, bring in Lucifer, bring in _Death_ , but do you really think that would change anything? You’re out of your depth, Beëlzebub! You don’t have any idea what you’re dealing with, you don’t understand love, you don’t understand how to _ssss_ top it –”

Beëlzebub looked bored now. “Azz a matter of fact, Crowzley, we do.”

Crowley stopped talking.

Beëlzebub turned his back to him, walked back over to the whispering stream and bent down, so that Crowley could not see what he was doing. When he turned, he held cupped between both hands a black goblet that glistened like tar, filled to the brim with that strange, smoky, grey substance.

“Do you know which river this izz, Crowzley?”

Crowley stared at the goblet. Black ooze was sliding thickly down Beëlzebub’s fingers.

“Well?” the fiend raised an eyebrow.

Crowley shrugged in his nails, in what he imagined was a casual, disinterested way. His limited geography yielded nothing to him. 

Beëlzebub brought the cup beneath his nose and breathed in deeply. “Thizz izz the Lethe,” he said dreamily, staring deep into the gently twirling wispiness. “Izz thou familiar with the name?”

Crowley frowned. Something was coming back to him, from long ago. A verse from Paradise Lost, or perhaps Dante. Some boring old poem anyway. He tried to remember what _lethe_ translated to in Latin.

Beëlzebub went on.

“The Lethe izz the river of forgetfulnezz. One sip, and all thy earthly memories pazz away, to flow with those of the dead. That izz, for humans, at leazzt. For demons, it can be controlled. It can be perzuaded to be a little more... _spezzific_. Canst thou feel its pull already, Crowzley? Canst thou hear its beguiling whizpers, its yearning for thy mind?”

Crowley felt sick. He could feel an altogether different kind of apathy pulling at him now: the peaceful kind, the kind that comes after you have lived a long, full life, and now feel ready to lay your head down, close your eyes forever, and wake up completely new...

Beëlzebub was smiling now, malicious, razor-thin.

“ _I can_ ,” he said. His eyes were bright with anticipation. 

And Crowley understood, realised that Hell had provided the worst

torture imaginable for him and his crimes with Aziraphale. They weren’t going to confine him here, or maim and molest and mutilate him, or even just simply kill him. No. Those would be merciful.

What they were going to do was remove his love for Aziraphale from his mind completely.

Terror like no terror Crowley had ever felt before in his whole existence was rising in his throat to choke him. He strained against his crucifix, recoiled backwards, but of course he was trapped.

And Beëlzebub was walking towards him now, slowly, extending that dripping black goblet filled with oblivion out in front of him.

“No,” said Crowley. He felt himself sinking in his bonds, losing height, as his body lost the strength to hold itself. “ _No_.”

“ _Yezz_ ,” buzzed Beëlzebub. Flies circled his head in his excitement.

“ _No!_ ”

Crowley’s head was spinning. His palms and feet and wings burned with pain as his weight fell on them and dug the adamantine further into his flesh. His head fell back, rolled against his neck.

“Thou shalt never recall thy relazzions with the angel,” Beëlzebub intoned, that terrible voice grave and powerful with dark magic, buzzing more ferociously than ever. He placed one hand on Crowley’s forehead to force his head back, stared disgustedly down at the writhing being beneath him. “Thou shalt rezzume thy work on the Earth, and continue to corrupt the soulzz of mankind – and if thy pathz do crozz again, never shalt thy friendship progrezz.”

Crowley, eyes rolled back into his head, sobbed in despair. He couldn’t stop himself. He had no control over his body.

Beëlzebub laughed deep inside his chest, a sound that buzzed and swarmed, and went on, ignoring him, as though musing out loud. “Canst thou imagine thy angel’s anguish upon next zzeeing thou on Earth, believing that the two of you will be _togezzer again_ – only for him to realize that thou no longer holdz any love for him?”

Crowley wailed in torment. “No!” he screamed. “ _No!_ ”

Beëlzebub laughed and laughed, threw his head back with it. The whole cave seemed to shake with that laugher, that awful, terrifying, infernal cackle.

“ _Now doest thou underzztand the true wrath of Hell, Crowzley?!”_  

Crowley wept and wept, his tears vaporising before they could even form. He felt hot tar drip against his chin as the goblet was brought to his lips. He smelled burnt carbon, and something strange that contradicted itself, like a cloud on fire.

Beëlzebub pushed its rim between his lips, and uttered one word, as final and impenetrable as a wall of flies.

“ _Drink_.”


	17. The Lost Century

Heaven hadn’t changed much.

Not that he would have expected it to in only four hundred years, but you never knew. Aziraphale supposed that he should be feeling all warm and happy at being home again.

He didn’t.

Barely a word was said to him about _that demon_. They wouldn’t discuss it. Perhaps they had chosen to believe he had been placed under some dark magic, or had been working with the fiend against his will; perhaps they were just pretending it had never happened. Aziraphale was merely slapped on the wrist, told not to do it again, and placed on a rehabilitation programme. They would have kept him there longer, but World War II had other ideas: eventually they had to admit that he had been good at his job – inspiring goodness and creativity in man, as is the role of a Principality – and that, since he seemed to be totally fine, they should really just let him go back.

His bookshop had, by some miracle, still been there. It had all been a bit dusty, and the junk mail as he’d pushed open the front door had been a good foot deep, but other than that… it was fine. He had gone into his little kitchenette, made himself an Earl Grey with two, rather soft, butter biscuits, and then walked along every towering shelf, greeting the occupants like old friends. _This_ was his home.

~

 

Though he would later not be able to follow his own logic, for his first few days back on Earth, Aziraphale put off searching for Crowley. It had been thirty years: if the demon had been recalled in that time – _replaced_ – then that would be that. No more Crowley. No more afternoon teas at the Ritz; no more hoarding stale bread for the St James’s populace; no more tame evenings at the opera, and less tame evenings in the shop’s back room. And no future, either. None of the plans they had discussed and dreamed up together, that day when all secrets had been laid bare. There would be no cottage in the Downs. No freshly baked angel cakes cooling above the Aga. No rainy Sunday mornings with breakfast and a paper in the big indulgent bed; no houseplants to cheer, or Christmas trees to decorate together, or fascinating little villages to explore. A world without Crowley… For days Aziraphale couldn’t bear the thought of finding out. Ignorance was safer. Not bliss, but… safer.

Eventually, he could no longer stand it.

The only problem with deciding that now was the time to find a loved one was that half the country was also wondering what had become of their own loved ones: away fighting, or missing since a bombing, or evacuated. Most of the demon’s favourite bars were closed on inspection, some completely obliterated in the Blitz; his swish manor had been sold. And there was nobody to ask, neither demon nor angel.

But it was only a year until he saw him, anyway.

There had been another raid in the night, and Aziraphale had been out all morning in the rubble helping to look for survivors, or consoling bereaved ones, or making tea. It was now twelve o’clock, and he was wandering the perimeter of the duck pond in St James’s Park, like he had always done _before_. It was chilly, and the sky hung heavy, clouds swollen with the promise of rain not yet shed. He was thinking about young William and Emily, the evacuated children of Mrs Turner from three doors down. What was to become of them now that their mother was dead. She was such a lovely woman. He pulled his woollen tan coat closer around his body and turned the collar up around his ears, wishing he’d had the foresight to bring an umbrella. Or perhaps he was wishing that the rain would come, just so that he could feel it on his face, and thank God that he was still here to feel it.

There were only a handful of other people out on that grim morning. An elderly couple on a bench, half-hidden behind the great broadsheet they held up between them; a young woman staring numbly into the water, completely unmoving; a dark-haired man on the next side of the pond, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, wearing sunglasses even as the first raindrops fell...

Aziraphale just about felt his heart implode. He stopped dead where he stood. It couldn’t be! It couldn’t possibly –

He ran. He ran so fast that the grieving young woman looked up to impassively watch him shoot by, and the elderly couple exclaimed in alarm as the air disturbance snapped their _Telegraph_ back in their faces. Aziraphale ran and ran, his footsteps loud in the still morning as they slapped on the cobblestoned path, his breaths bursting from him, the rain blurring his glasses...

“Crowley!” he cried. “ _Crowley!_ ”

The figure turned, unconcernedly, around.

It was him! It was him! Oh, sweet God and Jesus and Wilde, _it was him_. Aziraphale could feel his knees growing weak as the intense relief hit him. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe, because it was Crowley, and he was here, and _he_ was here, and everything was going to be all right, and they were going to be together again, and they were going to have an Aga after all, and –

Crowley smiled at him, raised a hand and gave him a little wave, parted his lips to speak. And Aziraphale launched himself into his beloved’s arms with enough force to knock anybody but a demon off his feet. 

“ _Oof!_ Aziraphale!” gasped Crowley, grinning even as he awkwardly tried to disentangle the angel’s choking embrace. “Aziraphale, what –”

Aziraphale would not be disentangled. He clung on tighter than ever, immersing his face into the gorgeous black fur collar of the demon’s coat, recognising every curve – rather, angle – of the body folded against his own, every sensation and every scent… No, not every scent: there was something new, something… leathery. And motor oil, too. He’d bought himself an automobile! Oh how typical, he should have known! Aziraphale clung to Crowley, loved every perfect inch of him in that one moment, and oh! how he would never, _ever_ , let go now, not now that they were here again, together on God’s good green Earth once more, and how had he ever let go in the first place, ever —

“O _kay_ , well it’s certainly nice to be missed, but you’re kind of choking off my gratuitous air supply here.” With immense strength, Crowley forcibly extricated himself from Aziraphale’s arms. Stared at him as though he was slightly mad. His brows, wonderful serpentine arches of serpentine wonder that they were, seemed caught between rising in mocking amusement and lowering in alarmed befuddlement. “Seriously, angel,” he said, and the sudden humourlessness of his voice suggested he had decided on the latter. “What’s the matter with you? It’s only been a century or so, you know.”

Aziraphale froze. A century?

“When was it? Eighteen twenty-four? Barely more than a century, then.”

All of a sudden Aziraphale found that he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. 

“Ah, that’s right, it was Vienna,” the demon snapped his fingers to himself, nodding. “Of course. Beethoven’s Ninth was premiering. Fantastic after-party.”

There was an odd lucidity to his voice, given how increasingly far away he sounded. Every word perfectly coherent in the angel’s mind, as though, starved of the voice it craved, it was now soaking up each syllable like butter across hot toast.

“Hey. _Hey_.”

Aziraphale realised that he couldn’t see. Everything was turning grey. Distant thunder growled overhead. 

“Angel?” Crowley peered at him, and Aziraphale jumped as his shoulder was clasped. “You okay? Aziraphale? You look a little pale. Maybe you should sit down for a minute.”

“No. No, I’m – I’m fine,” Aziraphale sniffed, fought to bring himself back under control. Under control! He was falling apart at the seams! “I’m just –  just not used to – to running like that.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” grinned Crowley, and Aziraphale felt his heart be crushed with grief, smeared across his ribcage, the gaping hole behind throbbing with loss. “How have you been, anyway? It’s been a while.”

He couldn’t cope with this. The mannerisms, the sarcasm, the fond nicknames, the cheekbones and the eyes and the glasses and the elegant outfits... He couldn’t. He could feel his self-control slipping away. He had to get away – get away from here, from _him_ , right now. The rain began to fall fast and heavy.

“I’ve been just fine,” he lied through a smile. A traitorous tear escaped and ran down one cheek, invisible in the rain. “I’ve actually – actually – got to get going, I’m afraid. I’ll have to catch up with you another time.” 

Crowley, completely dry, of course, was looking at him oddly. “Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, then peered at him again. “You sure you’re okay, angel?”

No! No, he was _not_ okay! He felt like he was dying on the inside, and Crowley didn’t even seem to realise what he was doing, how much he was killing him!

Aziraphale had to swallow before he could answer. “No – no, I’m just fine, thank you. Good – good seeing you.” And he turned and began to walk in the other direction. No footsteps in his whole existence had ever felt so difficult. Every fibre of his being cried at him to stop, to turn – turn around! You’re going the wrong way!

Crowley called after him. 

“So, see you around then?” 

Aziraphale inhaled deeply. Turned to look back at him. Set against the falling rain, and the smoking city, and the livid sky, the demon looked so, _so_ beautiful. He could have been painted that way – he _should_ have been painted. He was wearing his hair longer now, swept across his forehead, no longer slicked back from his face. His shades, too, were new: more rectangular, and lighter, though still enough to mask those wholly inhuman eyes beneath. That amber-yellow. It had been so long since Aziraphale had seen it. Heartbreak – like heartburn – ached within his hollow chest. How could emptiness be breakable? Aziraphale knew in that moment that it was possible.

“Oh. Oh, yes. Yes of course, my –” his words almost caught in his throat. “– my dear.”

And then he left Crowley stood alone at the duck pond in St James’s Park. If he had looked back, he would have seen the demon shrug to himself, then carry on in the same direction he’d been headed.

It was a long walk home to the bookshop, and the rain was torrential now, but Aziraphale didn’t really notice. It seemed fitting. When he finally turned the key and let himself in, his hair was stuck around his face, and his clothes were soaked through, clinging to him. He slowly closed the door shut behind him, pressed his back against it. Listened to the lashing rain, muffled behind him; the silence of the bookshelves in front. He felt the cool, rippled glass through his sopping hair.

Then he slid to the floor, put his head in his hands, and sobbed his wretched, broken heart out.

~

 

Crowley would keep reappearing in Aziraphale’s miserable existence of a life every couple of months. He did know where the angel lived, after all. And Aziraphale found that he didn’t have the willpower to decline any more offers out, even if it did tear him apart inside and leave him pining and numb and useless for weeks on end when his dear companion would inevitably disappear again. 

He found that Crowley could recall absolutely nothing about the Titanic, other than that he had been on it, and that he had had a significant hand in sinking it. Every time Aziraphale brought it up, the demon would change the subject, seemingly unconsciously. The matter appeared to just slide out of his mind like water off the back of a mallard.

It didn’t take the angel long to conclude that the Lethe was responsible. His self-pity had initially left room only for the belief that Crowley simply didn’t love him anymore – Hell must have talked him into sense, or brought that fiend he’d smote back to play, or perhaps he had decided for himself that Aziraphale had been a bit of fun, good in the sack, and would make a nice Friend With Benefits if he was in the mood for some… But over time the angel came to look at that sensibly, and realised that no, of course Crowley wouldn’t stop loving him. He had jumped off that lifeboat to die with him, hadn’t he? He had told him he loved him twice, and bled for it. He had saved him from Asmodeus.

No, Crowley could no more stop loving him than he could stop loving Crowley. Which left one other option.

Of course Aziraphale was well-read on the geography of Hell. All angels were. In fact it had been Aziraphale who had told Homer about its rivers, in a bid to inject _some_ truth into his Iliad and the rest. Aziraphale had never heard of the Lethe being used on a demon before – but then, he had never heard of a demon disobeying so atrociously that it required the removal of memories. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense.

And, the more he thought about it, the more sense he lost.

~

 

It terrified him how much he was capable of loving Crowley. The first law of angels – a law so intrinsic within every celestial being, as instinctive as knowing good from evil – is to love God. It isn’t even a law, really, but a way of life, as necessary to them as breathing is to humans. Every breath for humans is relief so imperceptible that it is unconscious, unfelt until air is taken away. For angels, every moment loving God is like the next breath, alleviation of a pain only seconds away from manifesting itself. And without it, without the love, without God, those Fallen angels are in perpetual agony, until they learn to control their pain. 

Aziraphale loved God. All angels did.

But he also loved Crowley. And nothing else, in his whole life, scared him quite as much as that did.

~

 

Aziraphale gradually came to stop associating the demon with Titanic, and with loss. The pain of the demotion from lover to friend would never cease, but, slowly, the wound became more bearable. He came to appreciate what he had, and saw his desire for more as selfish: Crowley seemed happy, and they were both alive.  He should be grateful for that alone.

This is not to say that he didn’t try to find a way forward nonetheless. On more than one occasion he sought to ‘romance’ the demon, despite his inexperience in the area – a trip to Paris, a flight under the aurora, an evening meal at the Ritz, surrounded by glamorous couples – but like with the Titanic, the demon simply seemed incapable of taking the hint. Affection just went right over his head.

He told Crowley he loved him once, when they were slumped side by side on the demon’s white leather couch in 1985. He’d been so drunk the world was on a pendulum, swinging back and forth before his eyes.

“I love you, Crowley,” he’d murmured, settling his head against the demon’s shoulder. “Love you so, so, _so_ much.”

If he just closed his eyes, like this, and snuggled in, like this, and turned his face, like this, to breathe in the demon’s intoxicating scent – the heady, smoky lilac cologne, the leather, the expensive suit, the – was that lemon? And vanilla? – then he could almost pretend... The intense sorrow that hit him all of a sudden, after so many decades of blocking it out, of refusing to imagine, was literally sobering.

Crowley had leant his own head against the angel’s. “Love you too, ’Ssszira,” he’d hissed, patting his arm, and then promptly gone to sleep.

Aziraphale nestled further into the snoozing demon. Buried his face into that sleek, sexy, mussed up hair. Gently, so very gently, kissed his temple. Tasted the salts of his skin. He moved his leg, ever so slightly. Chafed it against the demon’s own.

Aziraphale closed his eyes in frustration, feeling himself rise to meet his hands.

“Someday, my dear,” he murmured, spying a nearby blanket to drape across them both. Serpents really felt the cold, poor things. “Someday.”

~

 

In 1996, Crowley didn’t show up for their annual meeting. Young Warlock was to be tutored soon, and the plan had been to clandestinely sit on the Thames River Bus and discuss who best to bring in. The ticket for the full-length tour had been rather expensive. Dejected, Aziraphale had alighted at Westminster.

It was summer, 1997, when he first saw it.

The billboard was taller than his shop. Each of the seven letters was at least his height.

**TITANIC**

The poster featured two embracing young lovers above a view of the ship’s nose, as sharp and streamlined as an arrowhead. Critics’ comments below claimed it to be the film of the decade; unmissable; a masterpiece.

That winter, Titanic Fever hit as the film became a global phenomenon, the most popular to ever hit the screen. Its success was staggering. 

Jack and Rose became the modern Romeo and Juliet. Aziraphale couldn’t leave the house without seeing some kind of reference to the film: another magazine cover, another poster, another _My Heart Will Go On_ on the radio. Even his _Telegraph_ crossword began to bear references.

Aziraphale was passing an appliance store’s window when he first saw the trailer. It was playing on a loop on each of the window’s two dozen state-of-the-art thirty-two-inch television screens. He stopped and stared. He went inside to hear the audio. When he left, he’d somehow been convinced to buy one of the infernal machines.

And so it was that Aziraphale bought his first and last television set.

When, the following year, the angel and demon next met up in the National Art Gallery, Aziraphale nonchalantly asked Crowley where he had found his inspiration from. 

“Search me,” the demon had shrugged. “I overheard Jimmy discussing a couple of ideas with his producer in a bar and I thought, hey, sounds like a bloody good idea to me. And who better to co-direct than someone who’s had firsthand experience on the thing?”

“Can you _remember_ any of that firsthand experience?” said Aziraphale a touch desperately, unheeding of the clotted cream and jam now sliding thickly down his fingers*(12). He’d tried this a dozen times before, of course, but the film seemed like evidence of some kind of... of... _unconscious_ memory. If he could remember enough to create Jack and Rose so obviously from their own experiences, then perhaps with the right push he could remember _who_ he had taken the inspiration from...

* _(12) Okay, so maybe he had... let himself go... a little. Over the years. Well, wouldn’t you, too? He’d had a lot on his mind this past century; it would drive anyone to carbs. No, he wasn’t self-conscious at all about his weight, thank you very much. Now, if you would please mind not bringing up the matter again? Wonderful._

Crowley just shrugged again, unconcernedly sipping his black Americano. “The ideas just flew from me. It really got on the guy’s nerves the way I kept taking over all the time. It was my idea to bring James Horner in too,” he added proudly. “They’d had some kind of fall-out, but you know when you just _know_ that someone is right for you?”

Aziraphale choked on his mocha.

“– and you just _know_ that he’s exactly what the movie needs? And I just knew the soundtrack would end up a complete flop if we didn’t get the guy on board...”

And so it went. Crowley seemed capable of talking about the _film_ , but never the actual event. He couldn’t even discuss the film beyond a certain superficial level. And, no matter how much the demon pestered him, or how often the events of that fateful voyage played as their own cinematographic masterpiece in his head, Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to go and see it.

~

 

The world hadn’t ended, but, as far as they were concerned, that wouldn’t matter. Aziraphale looked from his flaming sword over to Crowley, holding his tyre iron in front of him like – well – a flaming sword. ‘Endearing’ was not a word usually applicable to the demon, but anyone grasping a weapon so useless, with such ferocity and determination on his face, all singed and dishevelled … It was endearing. 

And it was remarkable, really. Lucifer was on his way for a nice reunion, and was in all likelihood about to finish them off, yet Aziraphale felt so _calm_. He smiled across to Crowley. This was one of those moments, wasn’t it? Where he was supposed to say something, something moving and meaningful and profound, or confess a truth…

He took a deep breath of air that should have scorched his throat raw. 

“I’d just like to say, if we don’t get out of this, that...”

He hesitated.

What could he say? Thanks for a great six millennia? You were the best… _you_ _know_ … that I’ve ever had? Or just simply, I love you?

Aziraphale swallowed. No. It was no use.  He couldn’t. Besides, it was ridiculously clichéd to confess love an inch from death.

“…I’ll have known, deep down inside...”

He would tell him one day. This would not be The End. Aziraphale found words in his mouth, words that warmed him from the inside, that perfectly expressed his feelings. He smiled again, feeling all his love pooling into his eyes as he spoke, so tender it was like a caress.

“...that there was a spark of goodness in you.”

Crowley appeared less than moved.

“That’s right,” he said bitterly. “Make my day.”

Aziraphale hadn’t realised that hugs are a physical force within you, a power all of their own that are quite capable of manifesting at any given moment. It was with all the self-control he could muster that Aziraphale held out his hand. He breathed in a deep, calming breath.

“Nice knowing you,” he said. It was quite possibly the understatement of the century.

Crowley took it.

“Here’s to the next time,” he said. “And... Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale felt his heart skip a beat. “Yes?” he asked, standing very still.

Crowley’s eyebrows lifted slyly behind his shades as he smiled.

“Just remember I’ll have known, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking.”

~

 

Aziraphale told himself he was happy.

That he would burst into tears at the tiniest of incidents – a book he hadn’t been that fond of being sold, or a whale being stranded down the Thames, or opening his fridge to find he had no milk – he put down to mere stretched nerves, and stress overload, after the Not Really the End of the World.

That he wouldn’t eat – wouldn’t unless he went out to do so, and that was always with a certain being for company – he put down to mere common sense: new post-Apocalypse dieting revolutions. He seemed to live off tea and Digestives*(13) alone, and didn’t notice the weight falling off him. Crowley did, though, and would frown to himself as the angel continued to refuse desserts; would pester him into buying an ice cream as they strolled the perimeter of the park they now fondly thought of as their own; would try to sneak sugar and cream into his tea when he thought the angel wasn’t looking.

* _(13) Not even the chocolate ones._

Aziraphale told himself he should be happy. He knew he wasn’t.

The century was waning. Not the actual century, that was – rather, his own century. _Their_ own century. The century they had lost. 2012 was fast approaching, yet it might as well have still been 1912, the day before they set sail.

It was presently four in the morning, Christmas Day, 2011. Aziraphale opened his fridge. Inside there was butter (one year old), and Brie (two years old), and an open bottle of white (two hundred years old), and an open bottle of milk. Aziraphale pulled the latter out. Unscrewed the cap. Sniffed.

He set the milk down on the counter. He set the cap down next to it.

Then he fell to his knees, put his head in his hands, and, in the soft illumination of the open fridge, burst into tears.


	18. The Last Diamond Sky

**_April 15_ ** **_ th _ ** **_, 2012_ **

Crowley said he was busy all that week – something to do with the upcoming Olympics; Aziraphale decided he didn’t want to know more – but that he would come down as soon as he could. Aziraphale told him where to meet. Said that he would wait there all night.

And so it was that at five o’clock in the morning, on the fifteenth of April, 2012, a large vintage Bentley rolled to a halt at the docks of Southampton. An elegant figure dressed all in black sprang lithely out, peered down the lamp-lit length of the promenade, then spied his friend. And his friend, sitting on his jacket on the stone path, with his legs hanging over the water, rose to greet him.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale smiled warmly, grasping the demon’s hand. He was decades past consciously refraining from moving to embrace. “I’m so glad you could come.”

Crowley grinned. “Yeah, me too, angel. It’s been a while.”

They sat down beneath the old-fashioned street lamp – turn of the century, in fact – and were quiet. A little way down the dock, a tall fisherman swung his line out with a soft _plop_.

“I trust you know what day it is?” the angel asked nonchalantly after a moment, glancing somewhat tentatively at his companion.

Crowley did know. 3D films had, of course, been his idea; he had had a whole team of specialists working on the digital remastering of his Titanic for the past few years in preparation for the rerelease. He proudly told the angel so.

Aziraphale stared at the little waves slapping the bricks below them. There was barely a ripple out in the centre of the port, and the gibbous moon hung small and unembellished in a clear, predawn sky. It was as still as it had been a hundred years ago.

“A hundred years,” he murmured aloud. “It seems impossible, doesn’t it?”

Crowley set both hands on the cold stone behind him, leaned back on his arms under the lamp’s spotlight. Beneath the warm circle of artificial brightness, he gave the impression of basking in it. “I know. Where do the centuries go, eh?”

Aziraphale was quite suddenly engulfed by a wave of sorrow, and the kind of bone-deep tiredness that comes from fighting that sorrow for much longer than any human could possibly live through. He stared despondently across the bay. It wasn’t quite the Atlantic, or even technically a sea, but it was water all the same, and that was enough. 

Crowley glanced over, then nudged him playfully.

“Cheer up angel, hm? I know it’s bloody depressing, but it _was_ a long time ago.”

Aziraphale turned his face away.

After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Crowley spoke up again. “So, er, a hundred years, then? I don’t know about you, but I’ll drink to that.”

Aziraphale managed a small smile. “I’m afraid I didn’t think to bring anything, my dear.”

Crowley smiled, characteristically, like a snake. Two full, tulip-shaped glasses filled with wonderfully deep burgundy materialised in his hands.

“Lucky one of us remembered, eh?”

Aziraphale accepted his, and restrained himself from downing it in one. It was an excellent wine, of course, intoxicating in mere scent alone, wedges of dripping red fruit roasting over an open fire. Earthy, and sweet. Powerful. He tried to remember the last time he had eaten. 

“It’s very good,” he said eventually, after several more hits of the stuff. 

“Mm.” Crowley’s glass was already refilling itself.

Silence again. For several minutes they sat there, intoxication creeping insidiously through their willing minds. Then, soughing across the dawn, came, of all things, humming.

Crowley looked over to Aziraphale: to Aziraphale, twirling his glass through his fingers, eyes closed, and humming. And Crowley, as he listened, felt his eyes widen, and a smile slide wonderfully across his features. He felt far more gratified than was truly called for, and when he spoke, his voice was soft.

“You saw it.”

Aziraphale, eyes still closed, nodded. James Horner’s love theme ceased as he spoke. “I did.”

He was rewarded with a grin. “I thought you never would. Only took you fifteen years. The 3D version?”

Aziraphale very nearly laughed, but had to stop and press his aching heart. “Heavens, no,” he turned to face his companion. “But it was the new release.”

Crowley was nodding now, twisting so they were facing each other. “And? What did you think?”

For several moments, longer than the light question required, the angel was silent. It didn’t suit him anymore, Crowley had increasingly found, this being lost in thought: once, the expression had seemed Aziraphale’s default, Aziraphale at his most natural, Aziraphale at his best and happiest… but these days he would only look sad, and pained, whenever he adopted the once so characteristic expression. Wisdom, it seemed, was less rewarding than it had once been.

Finally, Aziraphale found words. He looked out across the still, dark bay, and Crowley could almost see the great ship reflected in those eyes, once so proudly docked right where they were sitting.

“It gave me peace,” said the angel. Then he sighed, and his true age seemed to cloud his voice, and the weight of the cosmos to settle across his hidden wings. “For the first time in a hundred years… I felt peace.”

Crowley looked at him curiously.

Aziraphale looked back. Then he reached out, and, ignoring the demon’s  startled  glance,  took his hand in his. Their pulses jumped together, for different reasons.  

“And for that, my dearest Crowley, for that peace… I thank you. I would like to thank you for everything.”

Crowley was looking uncomfortable, but he didn’t try to retract his hand. “Look, angel, if this is about the deal with the Apocalypse, then –”

“In part, perhaps, but then, not really. Not at all,” said Aziraphale, his eyes adopting a wide, distant gleam, even as they stared fixedly into Crowley’s own. “Ah, if you only knew, Crowley, what we’ve been through!” he exclaimed suddenly, and Crowley started slightly at the vehemence in his voice. “If only you could know what really happened on this night, in nineteen-twelve. If you could only _imagine_ …” 

Crowley, from behind his glasses, blinked. He was shuffling in unease now, staring at their held hands as though only through imagining hard enough would they be able to be released. “Er. Yeah. I’m, er, really not following you here, Aziraphale –”

“But aren’t you really?” said Aziraphale, a touch of something not dissimilar to mania clouding his voice. “I just want you to know that I don’t regret a moment of it. Of, you know, us. I want you to know that if I could go back in time, right back to the day we boarded that ship, then I wouldn’t change a single thing, not one second.”

Crowley stared. He wasn’t feeling very well. He felt like… like a duck. Like he was being too inundated with water for it all to flow so easily from his back. He felt like he was being pushed under, to somewhere he didn’t know or understand. He felt afraid. The déjà vu was suffocating.

“Aziraphale, please –”

And then suddenly he was being clasped by the shoulder, and stared at with such intensity, such _tenderness_ , that for one moment, for the strangest and most unfounded moment, Crowley felt his poor, ignorant, incomplete heart start forward, as though unable to resist an irresistible pull. And suddenly, almost involuntarily, Crowley made the decision to stop fighting it. He made the decision to let himself be pulled. 

And, somewhere down the dock, the tall fisherman looked up.

Aziraphale’s own heart was pounding now, like the downbeat of wings – a frenzy of feathers and frayed sanity, pushing him onwards as though in encouragement towards the words; words suppressed for so long, fermenting in his mouth, dreams crushed and pressed, sealed miserably within a barrel. Further suppression, like salvation, was barely a passing thought, existing only enough for dismissal.

“Now I know that explicitly expressing emotions does not come naturally to the British, and I know that I am to blame entirely for that, and thus you must listen to me quite carefully. I’m not sure I could bear to repeat myself.” Aziraphale rather formally cleared his throat. He always found himself slipping into the protection of nonchalant formality when at his most vulnerable. “Right. Here goes.” He twisted his hands before settling to brace them on the pavement, and his eyes flicked everywhere before finally meeting the demon’s own. “Crowley, my dear. I, um.”

Crowley waited.

 Aziraphale swallowed and ploughed on, before he could lose his momentum. His voice quivered. “I, well… I am – quite – in love with you. ‘Quite’ meaning ‘completely’, as a matter of fact. In fact, as a matter of fact, I have been in love with you for a rather long time now. And you couldn’t not know that, surely? I’m certain you couldn’t have forgotten, not entirely. More like it’s there in your head, and you can’t remember to remember it. It’s not your fault, of course. I think you just… need a little help getting there.”

“Aziraphale –” Crowley began, desperately.

“No, hush! Please, dear, this is terribly hard work, I’m going against my very nature as we speak. You must let me finish.”

“Right, right, okay.”

The angel pulled in a deep breath into his chest. “Er, where was I?”

“Um.” Crowley felt very odd. “You were talking about… about love.” He blinked. Incredulous. “You were talking about how you love me.”

“Yes. Yes. Thank you. Right, well, I love you. I cannot express it any simpler than that. It’s all very simple, really. When you think about it. And I never told you enough when I could, and I never told you in Tadfield, either, which I really ought to have done. But I shall be damned, my dear, if I have to wait for another Apocalypse before I have that chance again.” Aziraphale shook his head as though to calm himself, but his eyes were clear now, and his expression calm. “Say what you will, Crowley. Or don’t say what you won’t. Just know that I love you. And know that, regardless of whatever happens tomorrow, or even millennia from now, I will never be sorry that I love, loved, and –” a quick gasp for breath as he tried to coherently order the words, “– have loved you.”

Silence. 

Crowley stared. The fisherman stared. It seemed, fading though they were, that the very stars themselves were staring.

Aziraphale went on, lashes bright, eyes shining. “I thank God that I love you still, Crowley. Even after everything. I thank God for you, and for every moment we had together while it lasted, and for nineteen twelve, and for Titanic.” His voice broke as his tears bled. “I thank God for everything, Crowley, but most of all… Most of all, I thank Him for love. I thank Him for _love_.”

He finished, and there was total quiet. Total stillness. Somewhere, on the very edge of the horizon, the lightest touch of pink began to seep into the Southampton skyline. Many, many miles away, unnoticed by the whole world, a nightingale began to sing in London’s Berkeley Square.

And, halfway down the dock, the fisherman knew it was time.

Crowley shuffled awkwardly where he sat. He was at a loss for words – at a loss for everything. What did the angel expect him to say to this odd outburst, anyway? He supposed he should say something generically comforting, maybe pat him on the shoulder. A hug, even.

Odd, though. His brow furrowed. The only thing he could focus on, in his mind, was a _song_.

Aziraphale had his head in his hands. 

Crowley stared at the angel. Was he weeping? It was hard to tell. If he was then that might explain why the unfamiliar tune in his head was fighting so hard to be unleashed, to sound across the morning; angelic tears were such cursèd things. But no – the song, he knew, was not sin. And it was not from a twisted metaphysical principle that the urge to unleash it came. It was not an involuntary need. It was a desire. He _wanted_ to hum.

He swallowed, audibly. His mouth felt so terribly dry. It wasn’t even the most hummable song; perhaps he was just being stupid? Perhaps he should just keep quiet and pat his angel on the shoulder and manifest more wine, and… and…

Softly, very, very softly, Crowley began to hum. 

It was a strange tune. A melody that had not been heard on Earth for more than a hundred years. It was wavering, and insidious, slinky and crafty. The silence between the notes was music itself. It would flicker and undulate, spiral around for a few sets of chords, then stop, short – completely, dangerously unpredictable – before starting up again, that same swaying pattern. 

That song… Violins, and Bodhrán drums, and Uileann pipes, and spoons… How did he know that?

A nameless, wordless song. Everyone had been so happy, so hopeful. They were clapping their hands. Long skirts flowed around the women; the children had bright, overtired eyes; the men were ruddy-faced and grinning from ear to ear.

How did he know that? When _was_ this? _What_ was this? 

Slowly, Aziraphale lifted his head from his hands.

Crowley, meanwhile, continued to hum, more to himself now, each note revealing more and more as it flowed through his mind, igniting everything it touched, weaving it through the air in a thousand colours, elucidating every shadow and every secret, every unlamented sorrow…

Memories. That’s what they were. As though from a dream, only not a dream, not at all, but a forgotten reality. They were _memories_ , and they were twirling through his mind in a slow, graceful dance, orbiting one another and shining like stars. It was the song, the music, pulling him blindly by the hand towards a blurred light that was growing ever brighter.

He saw Victorian grandeur, and calm seas, and dazzling diamond skies. He saw a dancefloor lit by bare bulbs, and a violin on his arm, and a whole world of music and emotions condensed by the power of two worn old bows to intoxicate a party of delighted mortals, in patched-up clothes and sleeves out at their elbows. He saw a dawn, and slippery bed sheets, and dimmed resplendent afternoon light, and feathers touching the elegantly embellished ceiling – and a face... A face with soft curves, and full lips, and a dimpled smile; a face with eyes bluer than that ocean behind endearing little glasses, and crowned by a wicker of golden curls that shone like ethereal flame... 

And they had soared, soared together, in perfect harmony. They were a symphony of two, joined as one, two halves of a whole that ached with loss on separation. They _had_ been one, and they _had_ been whole… and they had been separated by a tragedy – a tragedy within a tragedy, a death without death, and now a hundred years had gone by…

Aziraphale was staring at him. He was staring at Crowley as though for the first time in more than a century.

Which was fair enough.

Crowley, staring back at the angel with huge eyes, trailed off. Southampton itself seemed to ache in the absence of his song. He could barely breathe.

“Aziraphale?” He hardly dared to whisper the name. 

Aziraphale opened that soft, rosy mouth of his ever so slightly to inhale. His whole body was perfectly still, his eyes wide; he was a boy with a butterfly net holding the rarest of all on his finger. Watching him, Crowley had the fleeting thought that perhaps this was how he appeared to the angel himself: too frightened to move, terrified for this not to be real; terrified to be woken from this impossible dream. 

Aziraphale nodded, almost imperceptibly, and gentle, warm light flooded into the demon’s eyes as his sunglasses dissolved – and with them, yet another barrier within his mind. The barrier before another dawn, so long ago. A dawn that had welcomed an altogether different kind of revelation… or perhaps it the very same, revealing itself once more. 

He was suddenly acutely aware of how the streetlamp behind his angel’s head – redundant now in the pinkish glow of the coming sun – seemed to light him from the inside. Sort of in the same way in which a flare had done on this same night, a whole, impossible century ago.

…And yet more barriers were burned… 

Aziraphale whispered, through a smile that trembled, in a voice as lovely and enchanting as daybreak, as soft as a breeze, “ _My dear_.”

It wasn’t quite a question, but there was an imploring note to it.

Inquiring.

They had been here before.

Crowley tried to form words on his lips, and couldn’t. There were no words on Earth he could use. Maybe none in Heaven.

A hand came up – his – and touched that face with fingertips that quivered in their disbelief. 

Aziraphale brought up his own hand to touch his. Crowley could feel a smile beneath his touch, a smile as tentative yet serene as the one they had shared on that first morning, on the bow after the Irish party, when they had both known to reach in at that moment and change their lives forever. And they _had_ changed their lives forever. Crowley knew then. Crowley could see enough to know with all his heart.

Crowley’s lips parted. He knew his line. By God – literally – he knew his line. And he had waited long enough to say it.

“ _My angel._ ”

They were leaning in. They were closing the space between them.

And then they were clasped to each other in an embrace so tight that all the breath escaped their bodies, and they were kissing.

It was like falling – no, like Falling, like being blinded by momentum, and deafened by momentousness, and spiralling down and down, deeper into Chaos – it was like Falling without the pain or regret, like Falling _up_ perhaps, or, if neither Heaven nor Hell would take them, then they would Fall sideways instead, and make their own world for themselves. 

Their lips crushed the ripe, disused curves of each other’s together, enough to bleed, enough for the necessity of breath to be forgotten. It was as though nothing had changed – like they would look up and see glittering chandeliers or elegantly embellished ceilings or a hazy grey dawn that unfolded across the silent Atlantic.  Their hands were all over each other, Crowley running his fingers through that hair – that soft, _soft_ , mass of fragranced hair, the cassia, the Eden – and Aziraphale touching that face – that face, so smooth, so angular, so familiar and cherished and perfectly sculpted – insatiable, ineffable, incredulous, the world spinning around so vehemently that if they let go of their hold they might just be sent hurtling into the cosmos to keep their watchful stars company. It was as though the last century had never passed. They were together again. They were always going to be together. Nothing could keep them apart – neither Heaven nor Hell, the Metatron nor Beëlzebub; Asmodeus, the Lethe, the metaphysics behind Good and Evil; neither God nor Lucifer. A hundred years had gone by and here they were, holding each other on the docks of Southampton, where it had all begun.

They could feel their tears running together down their joined cheeks together as one flow, Crowley’s prickling soothed by the balm of the angel’s sweet nectar. They kissed and they kissed and they clung to each other as one; they wove their very souls into their embrace, flowing through the other, pure and pure united – finally, _finally_ united – as one. They were one. Finally, after all this time broken and apart and incomplete, their halves were together. Finally, they were whole. Pulling back to stare into each other’s eyes, sharing their disbelief, their devotion, their destined love, their _everything_ , they knew this. This was destined. 

It was, in fact, thought God, smiling to Himself, ineffable.

And it was _theirs_. He and Aziraphale. He and Crowley. They belonged completely to each other. They belonged _together_.

They drew apart. Repositioned themselves enough to lay their heads down on the other’s shoulder. Their arms sealed them together.

Behind them, across the glittering waters, the glowing crest of a white sun was beginning to rise.

The angel and the demon stayed that way, holding each other, their very souls in the hands of the other. They could have stayed like that for millennia to come. 

Clouds were rolling in, dark grey and heavy. They were moving faster than the wind.

Beneath the embracing lovers, the ground started to quake ever so slightly. Crowley and Aziraphale pulled apart, reluctantly.

Aziraphale sighed in resignation as lightning flashed far in the distance. “I suppose it was to be expected, really,” he said, softly.

Crowley met his eyes and gave him a wry smile. “I guess we’ve really pissed off the big boys this time.” 

Aziraphale returned the smile. “I suppose we have.”

They pulled themselves into a standing position, not letting go of each other’s hands – never letting go of each other’s hands. In front of them, beneath a rapidly-louring sky, the bay was beginning to spiral into a whirlpool.

“Who d’you reckon it’ll be?” asked Crowley nonchalantly, gazing into the eye of the whorl. 

Aziraphale didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He shrugged. “Most likely the Metatron for me. After all, it was him I specifically disobeyed. Perhaps Beëlzebub for you?”

“I dunno,” said Crowley, as the last clear spot in the sky was eclipsed. “I wouldn’t put it past the old Prince of Darkness himself to pay us a visit, since, if you think about it Beëlzebub failed the first time, didn’t he?”

Thunder rumbled high above them, deep within its thick mantle of slate-black, fighting to break through.

“I suppose,” murmured Aziraphale. Their hands tightened their hold.

More thunder came, louder this time, already barely trailing behind its lightning counterpart.

“Says something about the mercies of Heaven and Hell, doesn’t it?” said Crowley musingly after a moment, as a tumbleweed of corrugated iron zipped past. “I exist in blissful bloody ignorance for a hundred years and you go through what you did, watching me swan around oblivious.” He shot his lover a quick look. “I really am sorry about that. It does rather explain why you’ve seemed even more – er – oversensitive than usual.”

Aziraphale smiled. He smiled so hard his body felt incapable of fear. “You have nothing to apologise for at all, and you know that.”

Crowley beamed. “Oh, good! I was only being polite. Figured a redundant apology was the clichéd thing to say.”

His angel chuckled. Then – 

“Do you still want to know what my name means, by the way?”

Crowley glanced sharply at him in surprise. He wasn’t sure he had heard right.

“How do you know about that?”

Aziraphale turned to face him. He gave the demon a small, sad smile. “I never left you that night, my dear,” he said. “Not really.”

Crowley stared at him. “You mean, you weren’t really –”

“Oh no, I was good and dead,” the angel informed him cheerfully, then raised his voice over another peal of thunder that seemed to shake the whole world. “I just mean that I... sort of... hung around for a little while after. Until you were rescued.”

Lightning tore the sky – as dark as night now – momentarily in two, holding the world in total, shadowless illumination for one brief half-second. The thunder that followed this time was ear-shattering, uninhibited by miles of cloud cover now, and the air crackled with static. Aziraphale waited for relative quiet to resume before continuing.

“It comes from Raphael,” he said casually, staring out across the turbulent water. “You know, the Healer?”

In front of them, little yachts and dinghies began to orbit the eye of the whirlpool, caught like toy boats around the plug of a bathtub.

Aziraphale turned his head to face him. “I am Aziraphale...” His gaze fell down, suddenly self-conscious.  “The Redeemer.”

Crowley cocked his head curiously.

“You imagine I’ll be Redeemed for this, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale met his gaze. He smiled sadly again, then shrugged, as though accepting and then dismissing his regrets. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I am made to Fall.”

Crowley squeezed his hand.

“I think it’s beautiful, angel,” he hissed, as the streetlamp above them – and all the others along the seafront – flickered. “Hell of a lot cooler than Star of God. It really suits you.”

Aziraphale beamed. “Thank you, my dear. That means a lot to me.”

Crowley grinned, then leaned in to briefly peck him on the cheek. Aziraphale turned his head so that their lips met once more, and for a few precious seconds they kissed, for the last time.

They pulled back, eyes lingering. In front of them the black sky looked almost to be unfolding itself, as though heralding an arrival.

Crowley, facing the sea, squeezed Aziraphale’s hand. Then he swallowed, and when he spoke his voice was light and casual.

“Love you, angel.”

He felt pressure in his palm as Aziraphale squeezed back. Out of the corner of his eye Crowley saw the angel’s smiling lips as he whispered his reply.

“Love you too, my dear.”

Across the horizon, their own personal Apocalypse continued. Lightning was now a permanent feature, brilliant white and brilliant orange, forking in every direction, and from every direction. The thunder was a constant throb in their ears, the wind whipping at their hair and clothes. The churning clouds looked thick enough for a knife to cut.

Behind them, as the sky continued to split, and the sea continued to boil, every light in Southampton went out. 

And Crowley and Aziraphale, one angel and one demon, two lovers against all of Heaven and Hell, stood their ground, held their hands, spread their wings, and quietly awaited their destiny.


End file.
